
r*^^^^- 



COUiNT AGMOR DE CtASPAEM 



BY 



THOMAS BOBEL 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 



BY 



O. O. HOWAED 



BKIG.-GEN. U. S. ARMY 










^^-'"'"'^^OFWASH^^^'"^'' 



NEW YORK 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 & 29 M^EST 23d Street 

1881 



Tr 



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V 



COPTETGHT 

G. P, PUTNAM'S SONS 
188J 



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DEDICATION". 



This Translation is Dedicated 
to my excellent and faithful fhiend, 

^. P. BUCK, Esq., 

Of Brooklyn, N.Y., 

WHOSE HEART BEATS WITH TRUE LOYALTT 

TO HIS COUNTRY 

AND TO THE LORD HIS SaVIOUE. 

FROM THE TIME WHEN HE, WITH OTHER FRIENDS, 

WELCOMED MY REGIMENT, 

WHEN EN ROUTE TO THE FIELD, TO THE CITY OF NEW YORE, 

TILL TO-DAY, 

HE HAS EXTENDED TO IVIB 

THE TENDER OFFICES OF FRIENDSHIP AND AFFECTION. 

O. O. HOWARD. 



TABLE OF COu^TEXTS. 



PAGE. 

Education, 15 

The High School, 23 

Public Caeeer, ... 31 

The Orator and the Writer, 47 

The Man, 69 

The Last Winter, . . 103 

Note, , .124 



COUNT AGENOR DE GASPARIN. 



It appears to be reversing the natural order of things 
to present to our readers the biography of a French 
author before offering in English some of his more 
important works. It resembles the giving descriptions of 
a fortress which deal with the effect of its appearance and 
ornamentation, and neglect to take account of its substan- 
tial parts. 

We venture this reversal of order, however, in the case 
of Count Ag^nor de Gasparin, hoping indeed, if success shall 
attend the effort, to interest the reader in the statement of 
M. Borel, his friend, to speedily follow them by an English 
rendering of his own remarkable writings. 

M. Borel has prepared and published to the French a 
capital book. Were there nothing else in existence touch- 
ing the subject of this treatise except this work, it has, we 
believe, sufficient intrinsic merit to recommend it and to 
warrant its translation and circulation among English 
readers. 

Its style is pure, simple, and earnest. Its word-pict- 
ures are briefly sketched and, like handsome structures 
with moderate adornment, are pleasing and attractive. 

(1) 



2 AGENOR DE GASPAItm. 

The author though abounding in detail, as we would expect 
in every effective biography, never fails to sustain himself 
and interest you in the doings, sayings, and peculiar char- 
acteristics of his hero. He portrays, indeed, as fine a charac- 
ter as christian history can bring to the contemplation and 
following of men, 

Gasparin appears to have exhibited in his career all the 
kindly courtesy of Melancthon, the fearless decision, when 
occasion required it, and self-reliant strength of Luther, 
and the uniform persistency of Calvin. Withal, his re- 
markable cheerfulness, proceeding from an over-flowing 
fountain of christian joy — ^that joy in fullness which 
nothing but the Master's abiding spirit can give — 
comes in to complete a wonderful model for our admiration 
and imitation. 

But beyond the intrinsic value of this happy biography, 
composed by an able writer, our American hearts turn with 
warmth toward Count de Gasparin himself, for another 
reason. 

Every American patriot can afford to pause for a few 

hours from his busy pursuits and look into the history of 

one who, though of another nation and living beyond the 

] Atlantic, was a true friend to our country when our country 

needed friends. 

Gasparin had ever been from his early years a pro- 
nounced friend of liberty. Always eloquent with voice and 
pen, in 1861, as soon as the widespread rumors of our com- 
ing troubles culminated in positive rebellion, he warmly 



AGENOR DE OASPARIK 3 

took up our defense and fully endorsed the struggle for 
human rights. In France and in Switzerland he made 
the forum ring with convincing arguments, and by the 
. thousands scattered his pamphlets far and wide over the 
fields of Europe, in advocacy of our cause. 

His profound sensibility and instinctive kindness led him, 
in our darkest days when the best friends of national unity 
were trembling for the country, to Avrite appreciative letters 
to our patient and over-worked President. Herein he of- 
fered Mr. Lincoln that encouragement w^hich resulted from 
a clear-sighted, almost prophetic vision, and which sprung 
from a strong, ardent, and sympathetic soul. 

By his letters and pamphlets he showed to President and 
people that the genuine lovers of liberty and free institutions 
had substantial friends abroad as well as at home ; that in 
spirit these friends were one with us ; that it was no narrow 
work, for we were in travail for the world. Of such friends 
Gasparin himself was a true exponent during the entire 
war. He gave voice to the earnest purpose, the fears and 
hopes of that part of mankind who were obliged to stand 
and wait w^hile our people, in behalf of good government 
and human rights, were freely pouring forth their treasure 
and their blood. 

A few of the best touches of Count de Gasparin's biogra- 
pher will be found in connection with some of the closing 
scenes of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Like a vehe- 
ment warrior endeavoring almost single-handed to stop a 
retreating force in shameful flight, so did Gasparin oppose 



4 AQENOB BE GASPARm. 

himself to the suicidal and disgraceful policy of the French 
government at the beginning of that war. He opposed it 
in its inception and with all his might. Yet, like a true 
patriot and warm-hearted man, he had at last the opportu- 
nity of giving aid and much needed relief to some of those 
who were in the outset most hostile to him. 

As the fleeing armies of his country, with the suddenness 
of an avalanche, came struggling over the mountains of 
Switzerland, he met them and assisted greatly in furnish- 
ing needful shelter and nourishment. The sick and the 
wounded were numerous. The small villages and hamlets 
in the county of Yaud were over-crowded. The air was 
poisoned. Sickness increased, and contagion stalked into 
every nook and corner of the manor house of Gasparin and 
its neighborhood. 

Here it was that the Count's conduct became remarkable. 
He was indefatigable. He gave relief to body and to soul. 
Amid the most harrowing scenes and under the most trying 
circumstances his cheerful, persistent, christian labor shone 
out and affords a beautiful exemplification of his elevated 
and unselfish character — a character which is the lawful 
fruit of pure christian teaching and living, one, in this 
instance, eminently like that of Him whose meat and drink 
it was to do the will of the all-beneficent Father. 

Gasparin appears at this time to have followed the Master 
wholly, and to have counted no loss, not even the loss of his 
life, as of value against the consciousness of duty completely 
performed. 

He finally sickened and died under the hand of the same 



AGENOR BE QASPARm, 5 

contagious malady which the retreating French soldiers had 
brought, whose sufferings, by his constant attendance and 
self-denying help, he had been able greatly to mitigate. 
After the fatal cases had ended, and many souls had been 
lighted by his counsel and his prayers through the dark 
valley, and after the last convalescent had been removed 
from his neighborhood, then it was found that the fatal ar- 
row had pierced his own breast. After a short resistance, 
in the midst of his friends, with his best beloved by his side, 
he quietly ceased from his life's struggle, and fell asleep, 
enwrapped in the everlasting arms. 

There is, and probably always will be, a perpetual con- 
flict between christian men and infidels. In this contest 
Gasparin made common ground with all christians. 

But he went further ; he struggled hard for a pure and 
simple gospel. He labored as a Frenchman to separate and 
keep separate church and state in government ; to withstand 
and turn aside the constant flood of superstition which is 
ever engulphing his countrymen ; to assert and maintain 
the rights of the individual soul to the open word and to its 
own interpretation of it ; to preserve the integrity and puri- 
ty of the family — an institution which, as he shows, be- 
longs in origin and completeness to the believers in the 
Bible. He cries out incessantly against divorce, — against 
the increasing evil among protestants of allowing mar- 
riage separation, contrary to the plain teachings of Christ. 
How clearly, too, he brings to light the error of enforced 
celibacy, of claiming higher degrees of holiness for the 



6 AOENOR BE GASPAEIK 

unmarried, as though there was essential sin in the married 
state, or a lower degree of spiritual attainment in conse- 
quence. 

The writings of Gasparin have had no inconsiderable 
influence in setting in motion the remarkable reformation 
which is now going on in France. 

It is not strange that his works have contributed largely 
to this result. For he has been a writer that friends and 
enemies have freely read. His style, as we have seen, is 
attractive; but much more is due to his habit, early formed, 
of most patient and thorough investigation. He was never 
satisfied with any partial proof. Weak arguments he dis- 
liked and never used. He examined carefully and long till 
he was convinced ; and then he spoke and wrote strongly. 

So many clear-cut intellects, men of might, cold and 
heartless in many instances, have come forward in the last 
half century, in literature and in so-called science, to attack 
the Bible, to dig and mine against the very foundation of 
sacred beliefs, to rob men of every vestige of christian 
hopes, and to leave absolutely nothing to replace them, that 
it is certainly refreshing to ordinary souls to meet a man 
like Count de Gasparin,-— one who never shrank from the 
conflict, and who, in every engagement, proved more than 
a match for his adversaries. He excelled in the labor of 
preparation, in the eloquence of presentation, and in the 
undoubted soundness of his conclusions. 

Such was Gasparin ; and we hope that before many years 
the scholars and christians of America may become as fa- 



AGENOR BE OASPARm, 7 

miliar with liis stalwart works as the Protestants of France 
and Switzerland now are. 

But even if this should not be the case ; if, in the multi- 
tude of great writers which the century is producing, it be 
impossible for the writings of this able man to attain the 
high reaches of eminence which his friends expect for 
them, so that with world-wide renown he shall be classed 
with Paley and Butler, nevertheless, this biography of 
Count Ag^nor de Gasparin by Borel will be like a sweet 
fountain, cool and refreshing, though there be thousands of 
others resembling it. The example of Christian living, here- 
in given, will ever be cheerful and helpful to those who may 
chance to examine it ; and God will, we hope and believe, 
bless the efforfs of his servants herein made to carry cheer 
and encouragement to other human souls. 



COUNT DE GASPARIN 



COUNT AGENOR DE GASPARIN 

BY 

THOMAS BOREL 

There are men who riclily deserve the attention of the 
generation in wliich they live. They are those who have 
had the courage to defend the claims of justice so often 
threatened or misapprehended, those who liave persisted in 
serving the cause of truth. The authority of their state- 
ments and the force of their writings have strengthened the 
shaken foundations of the family and of the faith. Resting 
upon the solid supports of immutable principles, they have 
labored to dissipate the dark clouds which our passions have 
gathered here below ; they have pointed out the paths which 
leod up higher, the summits to which humanity must attain 
if it is ever to accomplish its glorious destiny. Intelligent 
and faithful workers, they have applied their faculties, 
consecrated their lives, to the task of fulfilling the mission 
given them. Their productions are classified by the de- 
crees of criticism. The future will revise or confirm the 
judgments which these decrees have awarded. 

But the author himself, his very being, the hearth from 

(11) 



12 AQENOB BE GA8PARIK 

which the flames have burst forth, his soul, the source of 
sentiments which have moved hearers and readers, his 
moral nature in a word, present a subject for study whose 
interest is proportionate to the elevation of his thought and 
the extent of his influence. 

The important work of Christianity for the world, is to 
stop the decomposition which, unarrested, must cause its 
death, and to set it upon the road of continuous progress ; 
the glory of Christianity is to have given birth to, and 
moulded, characters which approximate that ideal to v, hich 
we feel that our inmost souls aspire. 

If the crown of humanity is composed of men of genius 
who have shone with brilliancy in the department of 
science, of arts, and of letters, its treasure the most precious, 
has been derived from those characters and lives which, in 
all ranks and ages, have borne the strong impress of the 
Divine seal. 

The work which we here present to the public is written 
from authentic notes, confided to the author by a true and 
faithful hand. They are of absolute verity. The author, 
besides, had the privilege of knowing personally Count 
Ag^nor de Gasparin. Having passed every year a few days 
under his roof at Valleyres ; having sustained relations of 
cordial intimacy with him, he made him a study. In this 
he was aided by that habit of close observation which a 
serious life and habitual relations with all classes of society 
produce. 

Being in opposition to M. de Gasparin on ecclesiastical 



CO UNT BE GASPARIN, \ 3 

questions, the author has not written a line without guard- 
ing himself against the influence of the affection with which 
BO fine a character has inspired him. For the author to 
take the censer would have been to misconceive the humiLty 
of his model ; it would have had the effect to lessen its real 
grandeur. A biography has no value except in its rigid ad- 
herence to truth. 

Is the writer under an illusion ? By recalling the crowds 
of people who, during the winter, gathered at Geneva 
around the eloquent chairman; by collecting the testimo- 
nies of admiration and recognition, which are still every 
day repeated among us seven years after his death, in the 
midst of a forgetful and over-worked age, the author be- 
lieves that he is discharging a debt due to his country. 
Furthermore, where in this world the echo of real glory 
dies far sooner than popularity, to relate what this good 
champion of every righteous cause has done, to present to 
mankind this type of a true Christian, is indeed a salutary 
accomplishment as well as an act of justice. 

Sustained as he has been in his labor by the charm of 
that sympathetic and radiant face, the author has been 
affected by still another sentiment : the hope of exciting the 
emulation of the golden youth of France and Switzerland, 
whose weakness, whose follies, whose wanderings ruin the 
soul and destroy the powers of the mind. 

Behold a life which was not a dream of the imagination, 
a life which mingled with the great questions of the age, 
with the distresses and the glories of the country, with the 



14 AOENOB BE GASPABIJ^. 

political struggles, with the seductions of the world, with 
the agitations of the church, with the emotions of the fam- 
ily! Will not such a life awaken attention? Will it not 
lift up every individual in whose heart noble aspirations are 
not completely extinguished ? 

Oh ! what hours of sadness, what tears would be spared 
to wives and to mothers, if hearts, instead of grovelling in the 
dust of nothingness, would speedily aim at the higher in- 
terests. What lives are lost by resisting the voice divine 
which tells them of the proud joys of duty ! What a future, 
what grandeur for that people which, among its sons, shall 
count many citizens of a temper, and of an elevation of 
character, equal in individuality to him whose traits we here 
propose to sketch. 

TH. BOREL. 

Geneva, November. 1878, 



EDUCATION 



EDUCATION. 



Count Agdnor de Gasparin was born at Orange the 
twelfth of July, 1810. By family he belonged to the Gas- 
pari of Corsica, whose oldest branch became extinct in 
1840, in the person of Count Lucius de Gasparin-Belleval. 
The younger branch was established in France with Ornano, 
toward the middle of the sixteenth century. This branch 
possessed still, at Cape Corso, the torre dei G-aspari, which 
had been transmitted to it by its chief, Count Lucius de 
Gasparin-Belleval. The church of Morsiglia encloses with- 
in its limits several tombs of his ancestors.^ 

By his grandmother M. de Gasparin descended in a di- 
rect line from Jean de Serres, the historiographer of France 
under Henry the Fourth. From his paternal and from his 
maternal side his ancestors followed the profession of arms. 
His father, who died in 1862, was also, at first, a soldier. 
He, Count Adrien de Gasparin, successively Prefect, 
Peer of France, Minister of the Literior, and member of the 
Academy of Sciences, was one of the most distinguished 
executives that France ever had. A man who united great 

* See note at the end of the volume. 

(17) 



18 AQENOR BE GASPAIim. 

firmness with great goodness, and a grand flexibility of 
character with a rare capacity for labor. His scientific 
works have become established authorities. The gratitude 
of French and other agriculturists caused them to erect to 
his memory a statue at Orange, his native city. He married 
Mile. Adele de Daunant, a woman of a serious mind, brave 
and tender-heart, and possessing a character at once 
christian and courageous. 

Until twelve years of age Ag^nor de Gasparin lived with 
his brother Paul ^ at Orange, under a healthful discipline 
of study, largely accompanied by physical exercises, 
to which he devoted himself with ardor ; for example, riding 
horse-back, and swimming with all his strength in the 
Aygues river. He refreshed himself after the gymnastic 
exercise with a raw onion and a bit of bread, which were 
craunched with a fine set of teeth. Imbued with stoical 
notions it frequently occurred to him to subject himself to 
pain. For this purpose he would put sharp stones in his 
shoes and walk thus ballasted as long as he could ; the more 
acute the suffering the greater his satisfaction.^ 

In this dawn, clear but already tinged, there appeared the 
figure of a man in the full vigor of his age, who f)ossessed a 
poetic nature, a generous, chivalric, sparkling spirit, viz. : 

^ Count Paul de Gasparin, Elder Deputy, Mayor of Orange, followed 
with success tlie scientific career of his father. 

'^A curious coincidence, his future brother-in-law and she who was 
to be his wife did so much of this at the Rivage that they modestly as- 
sumed for title: " The Two Hercules of the North.'* 



'EDUCATION. 19 

Augustus de Gasparin, his favorite- uncle. He followed and 
encouraged his nephews in their gymnastic exploits. This 
increased their affection for him. 

The two brothers had for a preceptor, M. Schaffer, an 
Alsacien, a man of excellent erudition, whose scholastic 
teachings, made clearer by the help of their father, put only 
proper ideas into the young men's brains. There was 
nothing to unlearn afterward, as is too often the case with 
most youths. 

In autumn the family was accustomed to spend several 
weeks at Pomeral, at the foot of the Alps. Ag^nor de Gas- 
parin preserved a fresh and ideal remembrance of these 
visits, as he did of all the happy hours of his childhood. It 
was a country more diversified than Orange. They spent 
their time in the fields. Long walks, and several Alpine 
excursions thus early initiated the lad into that poetry of 
nature, whose charms few men appreciated better and whose 
delights few men knew more than he. 

In the intervals of study, exercise, and sports in the 
open air, Ag^nor enjoyed the tender care of a mother, who 
earnestly desired that her sons should possess energy and 
purity of character; and the familiar conversations of a 
father who was learned and affectionate. There were ad- 
ded, too, the fugitive sorrows and joys of the fire-side. 
Each evening the father, holding the two children upon his 
knees, sang to them : 

"Malb'rouffh s'en va-t-en jsnierrel" 



20 AGENOR BE GABPAEIJ^. 

At the last two lines . 

**La ceremoni' faite 
Cliacun s'en fut coucher,"* 

the good nurse came forward ready to lead the brothers 
away. So when they saw that the fatal couplet was com- 
ing, they both cried out with one voice : ^ " Pas la c^re- 
monie! pas la cdrdmonie I " But over this daily recurring 
disappointment, sleep very soon obtained the mastery. 

Those first years of his life left on the heart of Ag^nor 
de Gasparin impressions which were never effaced. They 
were deepened in after years. They are to be noticed in 
his excellent book, La Famille : " My eyes," cries he, " are 
directed toward a time which will not return, toward be- 
loved faces which I shall not again see upon the earth ; yes, I 
shall always remember that library of my father in which 
we children passed so many happy hours, going from the 
electric machine to the fine picture-books, visiting the rows 
of volumes that we were permitted to touch, the books of 
travel, and the histories ; thus, recalling one by one the in- 
effacible remembrances which return to us so many years 
afterward, there are awakened within us the best senti- 
ments of our hearts." ^ 

But the system of private education was not in accord- 
ance with the customs of the times. The father, moreover, 

1 The ceremony complete. Each retired to rest. 

2 Not the ceremony, etc. 

3 " Droits de Coeur," page 83. 



EDUCATION. 21 

foreseeing the probability of a public career for his sons 
desired to bring them early into contact with the world. 
At twelve years of age Agdnor,. accompanied by his brother, 
went from the paternal mansion to Paris. M. and Mm. de 
Gasparin after accompanying the two sons there were 
obliged to leave them. 



THE HIGH SCHOOL 



THE HIGH SCHOOL. 



The high school, Louis le Grand, where Agdnor de Gas- 
parin with his brother Paul entered, was then for him the 
vestibule of the world : a vestibule which appeared to him 
sombre enough, and left in his mind only sad remembrances. 
He spoke of these remembrances with bitterness. He ever 
after regarded high schools, of the boarding kind, as an in- 
termediary between the prison and the convent, as a gar- 
rison life applied to study, or far better, as a center of 
depravity, as a focus of corruption. Thoughtful minds, 
which get at the truth because they go to the bottom of 
things, unite in the same conclusion. After the warmth 
and protection of the home-nest there succeeded the cold 
and naked walls of a monastery ; after an order of studies 
modified with intelligence there came the invariable routine 
of a regiment. The free excursions into the country which 
was exuberant with life, were over. There was in place 
of them the monotonous and regular march in file across 
the streets of Paris. If the friction between comrades in 
such a school knocks off some of the angles of the student's 
character, tempers him and gives to him a manliness which 
he could not acquire under the paternal roof, still it is too 

(25) 



26 AGENOR BE OASPARIK 

often the case that the heart, which suffers, receives detri- 
ment or is hardened. The suffering for Agdnor was real 
and permanent, but far from producing hardness of heart. 
It increased its delicate sensibility. 

What happy intimacy and profound joy did he experience 
when, during those vacations altogether too short, he was 
Avont to visit his own ! He resumed with ardor those physi- 
cal exercises in which he so often had excelled. His much 
loved uncle, who had made of him a good walker and an 
intrepid horseman, always had some unbroken colt for the 
use of his nephew. Alas ! the hour of return to Paris al- 
ways rang out too soon, and to that life so full of sunshine 
there must succeed the prison. 

In French colleges there is an unfortunate character, a 
kind of sub-superintendent, whose calling is to maintain a 
sort of discipline during the sessions of the classes and 
hours of recreation. He is the object of the railleries, bursts 
of anger and conspiracies of pupils who are apt to see in 
him an enemy against whom all the mischievous are in open 
war. They name him " pion." ^ This man, a kind of 
gaoler, of whom a pupil might well complain, the more be- 
cause his duty was to add to the restraint, excited in the 
outset the sympathy of the new scholar. He never a single 
time engaged in the pranks which other pupils contrived 
against the pion, and his memoirs have classed these 
grievous sufferers, the pions, as among those beings who 

^ Pion — pawn or man of draughts. 



THE HIGH SCHOOL. 27 

have been deprived of sunlight and condemned to breathe a 
cold and withering atmosphere — pariahs of the civilized 
world, who are entitled to our warmest compassion. 

During his sojourn at the high school Ag^nor made more 
than one visit to his parents. His heart then blossomed. 
It found again the wonted tenderness of the family circle. 
But the experience of this tender care, as we find from liis 
later life, had nothing weakening in it. Its exercise did 
not detract from the manliness of his character. 

In 1831 — Agdnor was then twenty-one years of age — the 
cholera,\uddenly introduced into Paris, carried there its 
ravages, making innumerable victims among all classes of 
the population. Several educational establishments were 
closed. It was .under advisement to send the pupils of the 
high school to their families. Many parents did take away 
their children. Madam de Gasparin, when her husband 
offered to recall her sons, let them remain at their study 
rooms, saying, that the young people, in order to become 
men, must not fly from danger. The christian mother knew 
to whom she was confiding her precious treasure; the 
Spartan woman prepared the athlete. 

Let us return to the high school. Ag^nor de Gasparin, 
^'ho had there attained remarkable success, in time left the 
i istitution ; he then pursued several courses of study, devot- 
ing himself specially to the law, a study indispensable to 
every public career. 

For France this period constituted a brilliant epoch in the 
new birth of intelligence and intellectual life. After the 



28 AGENOn BE GASPARm. 

wars of the Empire, after the subserviency of mind to a 
despotic regime, this generous breath of life, strengthened 
by the advocacy of the most illustrious professors, had 
taken hold of the new generation. An ardent set of young 
men rallied around such men as E-oyer-Collard, Guizot, 
Cousin, Yillemain, whose voices awakened echoes even to 
the smallest communities of France. 

The books of men like Casimir Delavigne, Lamartine, 
and Victor Hugo were in the hands of every student. 
Public life was exalted in the skirmishes, in the combats, 
iiand to hand, and in the great classical and romantic bat- 
tles which were delivered in the intellectual field. The 
effect was enhanced by the literary duel which veiled a 
second struggle of a more general character ; the less noisy, 
the more formidable was this contest between the Jesuitical 
and reactionary party on the one side, and the modern as- 
pirants after liberty and light on the other. 

Count Agenor de Gasparin belonged completely to this 
epoch of toil and enthusiasm. His impetuous character, 
his independent soul inhaled these warm currents. His 
memory retained the " Mess^nienness " of Casimir Dela- 
vigne, the most beautiful odes of Victor Hugo, and the 
iambics of Barbier. He felt less attracted by Lamartine's 
poetry, which appeared to him, perhaps, too obscure. He 
followed with overpowering interest the political debates. 
It was a feast for him to be present at a sitting of the Cham- 
ber during a day of tumultuous discussion. 

When the revolution of 1830 broke out, in his capacity as 



THE HIGH SCHOOL. 29 

a member of the National Guards, he delivered his first fire, 
beholding in this struggle — as did all the brilliant young 
Frenchmen — a question of life and death to his country. 
Incessant discharges, coming from the house of a citizen, 
were poured upon his battalion. Overheated by the sun, 
excited by the powder, enraged by the resistance, exasper- 
ated at the sight of their wounded and their dead, the 
National Guards forced an entry, and were about to massa- 
cre everybody, when Agenor de Gasparin sprang to the 
defence of the prisoners, covered them with his own body, 
and did not leave them till after they had been placed under 
the protection of the provisional authority. 

The three days had accomplished their work. Closing 
his door to the agitations of the forum, the young student 
finished his law preparation and took his diploma as an 
advocate. This was the consummation of a course of solid 
study, but it was not to be his life-work. Agenor de Gas- 
parin never pleaded at the bar. The high position of his 
father opened up to him prospects which better corresponded 
to his instincts. Bred for public life his abilities led him 
to play an important part. He comprehended it ; he as- 
pired to it. 

His translations of Greek poetry into verse, and his suc- 
cesses at the High School, had considerably flattered his 
youthful self-love, so that he felt at this time the unfolding 
of the wings of ambition. 



PUBLIC CAREER 



PUBLIC CAREER. 



His public career gave to Count Agdnor de Gasparin a 
good acquaintance with men and with practical affairs. He 
began with a confidential mission of a high character. This 
he undertook in 1833. Ag^nor de Gasparin was then 
twenty-three. 

The city of Lyons, of which his father was the Prefect, 
had commenced an insurrection. The mails were stopped. 
Certain spirits, everywhere over-excited, inspired the 
government with a lively inquietude. No railway yet 
furrowed the surface of France ; communications, always 
slow, were habitually interrupted. It became necessary at 
any price to send secret instructions to the Prefect of Ly- 
ons. A person could not reach the city, which was already 
in complete revolution, except by passing through hostile or 
doubtful departments. M. Thiers, then Minister of the In- 
terior, called to him the son of the Prefect of Lyons, and 
asked him if he would undertake the adventure. Gasparin 
replied by one word : " Yes ! " and set out immediately. 
Every moment of delay would have aggravated the difficul- 
ties of the situation. He ran the post day and night, first 
with a light carriage which broke down, and then in a cart, 

(33) 



34 AGENOB DE GASPABIN. 

his dispatches upon his breast and his pistols at hand. He 
reached Lyons at the moment when order was regaining the 
mastery. The unshaken courage, the imperturbable calm- 
ness of the Prefect had subdued the outbreak. 

What we are accustomed to call the good fortune of 
circumstances, the good fortune of finding positions ready- 
made for one, exercises less influence than we are apt to 
think upon the entire life. Even positions ready-made 
must be conquered, yes, by labor and perseverance, against 
the danger of lessening and of sinking. 

Those first years of blossoming and of freedom, too often 
dissipated in frivolous pleasures, in side-scene and street 
intrigues, were for Gasparin but the continuation of studies 
applied to practical life, to questions of administration and 
political economy, and to grand social problems. 

He published upon amortizement [alienation in mortmain] 
a pamphlet which exhibited a knowledge of principles and 
maturity of judgment, that we would have said, must have 
been derived from a long experience. Soon after, at the 
time when France was discussing the advantages and the 
dangers of the colonization of Algiers — a conquest of the 
last reign — at the time when this question of vital import- 
ance was dividing the opinions of men, Gasparin, in a 
writing entitled : ^' La France doit-elle conserver Alger," ^ 
announced ideas of astonishing prevision and enlightened 
patriotism. 

His intelligence, his growing reputation, his ardor in 

^ "What shall France do to preserve Algiers ? " 



^ PUBLIC CAREER. 35 

work, quickly made liim distinguished. In 1836 he was 
appointed Cabinet Chief of the Ministry of the Interior. In 
1837 he entered the Council of State as Master of Requests. 
It was the epoch of his marriage. He wedded Mile. Valerie 
Boissier. She belonged to one of the first families of 
Geneva. His book entitled : " Le mariage au point de 
vue Chretien," afforded the means of relating the noble 
traits which pertain to conjugal life. It was granted to him 
to realize both its poetry and its beauty.^ 

This earth has rarely beheld a union of two natures so 
perfectly adapted to each other. Both were fond of the 
ideal ; both deeply attached to truth. Both of them were 
equally practical, the wife having the more imagination, 
the husband more of the positive elements. Both were as- 
piring heavenward, she bounding beyond, while he works 
himself up to the summits. No union of two souls was 
ever more intimate, more absolute, more radiant. In the 
family Ag^nor de Gasparin was really the head. In the 
union he had, too, the authority. Ah ! if this world had 
seen near at hand that love it would better have compre- 
hended the grief of a widow, whose faith has not grown 
dark in the wreck, but whose heart will remain wounded 
till death. Suddenly cast down from her heaven after thir- 

^Mlle. Boissier had passed an entire winter at Paris with, her par- 
ents. The two families — of Gasparin and Boissier — had the same ac- 
quaintances and went to the same salons. The future couple, however, 
did not meet once. "I did not perform my part of it," cried M. de Gas- 
parin, when he recounted the cuxumstances. 



33 AGENOB DE GA8PAEIS. 

ty-four years of ineffable enjoyment, struck and bruised by 
this thunder-bolt, she has shut herself up with her Bible. 
She receives the sighs of the afQicted ; she waits. 

In 1842 Count Agenor de Gasparin placed before the 
electors of Corsica his candidacy for the Chamber of Dep- 
uties. The parties, which were very violent in Corsica, did 
not hesitate to have recourse to means other than civil. 
Passion arose at times even to the pitch of assassination. 
Musket shots were often the quick reply to a political en- 
emy. Now, the candidate had enemies. Whilst, on the day 
of the election Madam de Gasparin, much affected, her heart 
palpitating, fearing more a victory than a defeat, was wait- 
ing alone in her room at Bastia for the result of the vote, 
a rough knock at the door came suddenly to arrest her 
thoughts. She opens and finds herself facing a very tall 
man, adorned with a prodigious black beard. It was a re- 
lation, a Gaspari who had come down from the mountains. 
He did not enter, but standing upon the threshold contented 
himself with saying : " Be calm ! " then making the gesture 
of hanging :" If they kill your husband : . . . nefaremouna 
vendetta ! " that is, " won't we have revenge ! " An agreeable 
prospect for a young wife ! 

The Count Agenor de Gasparin took his place in the 
Chamber as Deputy from Bastia. A magnificent speech 
upon slavery — in relation to the right of search — an im- 
petuous burst of eloquence, exhibiting indignation and 
generous compassion, signaled his introduction, and marked 
his place in the first rank among orators. He main- 



i 



PUBLIC CAREER. 37 

tained the place. Eacli session saw the effect of his words 
increase. As soon as he ascended the tribune silence pre- 
vailed. One by one the Deputies, leaving their places, 
descended into the semicircle, in ord^r to hear better. In- 
terruptions, contradictions, interpellations, far from intim- 
idating him, habitually excited his courage. They were to 
him what the hissing of the bullets, the roaring of the 
cannon, and the turmoil of the battle are to a good soldier. 
During the four years of his parliamentary life Gasparin 
attacked every iniquity, denounced every abuse of power, 
and claimed everything in the direction of liberty. Religious 
liberty, among other principles of freedom, had not a more 
intrepid defender. The independence of his spirit, the 
integrity of his character, the liberality of his opinions, 
brought him very soon the esteem of his colleagues. He 
was unwilling to enfeoff himself to any party. Voting the 
next day with his adversaries of the evening before, he 
obeyed his conscience, which kept in advance of his sympa- 
thies. His impartiality, recognized by all, carried great 
weight of opinion with those very persons whose ideas he 
was obliged to oppose. 

He was a Deputy when there arose a grave difference 
between the editors-in-chief of two journals which were 
very popular in Paris. The antagonists were about to go 
to the wood of Boulogne for personal combat, when one of 
the witnesses counseled them to take the Count Agenor de 
Gasparin as an arbitor and submit everything loyally to his 
decision. The proposition was accepted. Count de Gas- 



38 AQENOn BE GASPAHIN. 

parin examined the matter and pronounced his verdict, and 
the two adversaries extended their hands to each other. 

We know that in deliberative assemblies there is always 
a certain number of members, the active, the workers, who 
are more frequently called than others to serve on commit- 
tees. Gasparin had his large share of these labors. The 
diversity of his knowledge, his energy in business, the 
clearness of his mind, and the certainty of his judgment 
designated him for those labors which, during the sessions, 
left him not an instant of leisure. As a Deputy he gave all 
his time, sacrificed all his convenience, and exhausted his 
strength. In the evening alone, he was accustomed to take 
a rapid walk in the streets of Paris with a wife who loved 
the woods, the mountains, the verdure, the sun, and the 
expansive horizons. 

In 1846 the hour of his liberation sounded. The fixed- 
ness of his principles, joined to the firmness of his charac- 
ter, could not make of this defender of every healthful in- 
dependence a candidate agreeable to the government. The 
clerical party, powerful everywhere, saw in M. de Gasparin 
one of their most formidable enemies. Gasparin had at- 
tempted to organize in the Chamber a group of Deputies 
who, having decided to combat election frauds, refusing to 
petition the Ministers in the name of the electors, were 
determined to attend only to affairs of the country. The 
group was formed and lived for some time. But Gasparin, 
having remained faithful to principle, was not slow to 
comprehend that every chance for reelection was taken 



PUBLIC CAREER. 39 

away from liim in the small localities, which were ardent in 
the pursuit of small objects of ambition and never saAY 
beyond the interests of their parish. He then presented him- 
self, in 1846, as candidate for Paris. He affirmed his con- 
victions, declared his resolution in bold speeches which 
were much applauded, and was not reelected. 

He was about to execute a project for a long time cher- 
ished, namely, a journey to the East, when peculiar circum- 
stances intervened to postpone his plan for several months. 
After an agreeable winter of solitude for the two at the 
manor Yalleyres ; after a beautiful summer in the midst of 
his family, M. and Mme. de Gasparin, leaving France appar- 
ently in complete quietude, set out in the month of Septem- 
ber, 1847, for Greece and Egypt. 

In March, 1848, they learned at Cairo of the revolution 
which demolished the throne of Louis-Philippe. Every 
official French colony, Orleanist the evening before, took 
instantly the red cockade. M. de Gasparin, after having 
publicly addressed a chivalric letter to the exiled monarch, 
sent his resignation of Master of Petitions to the Council of 
State. Then he pushed on into the desert of Sinai. That 
solitude without bounds, that poetry of the infinite, that life 
in full liberty, the contemplation of that mountain which 
trembled formerly in the presence of the Majesty of the 
Most High, the sight of those sands which were furrowed 
in every direction by the tribes of an ungrateful and re- 
bellious people, those things had there for two young souls 
which were enthusiastic and christian, the elements of pro- 



40 AGE NOR BE GASPARTK 

found emotion and solemn reflection. Each evening, when 
the tent was set up, the Bible, which always accompanied 
these travelers in their pilgrimage, was opened under the 
vault of the heavens, whose constellations revealed the 
glory of the mighty God. On the Sabbath, whatever might 
be the locality in which they had stopped the evening be- 
fore, the caravan was accustomed to halt, to celebrate its 
services and to rest. The Arabs of the escort, grouped 
around M. de Gasparin, listened to some parable of the 
gospel, or to some recital of the Old Testament. It was 
sometimes upon a fresh oasis, oftener at the foot of a rock 
which the sands had come to batter and which had seen 
Moses pass by. 

The travelers visited Palestine with careful interest. 
Having been recalled to Europe by political events and by 
a family grief, they established themselves in Switzerland, 
passing their summers at Valleyres-Yaud, at the foot of 
the Jura ; their winters at Rivage, near Geneva, upon the 
borders of the lake in front of Mont-Blanc. 

M. de Gasparin loved Switzerland for itself, for those 
whom he there held dear, for the breath of liberty that he 
there inhaled, and for the independence that he there en- 
joyed. 

Count Ag^nor de Gasparin did not decide from 
caprice, from inconsiderateness, under a first impression 
without reflection, the question of living in Switzerland. 
He viewed it with a soul that had the mastery of itself, 
weighed the consequences of the step, and was induced to 
fix his abode there after mature consideration. 



PUBLIC CAREER. 41 

His friends in France have complained of a decision that 
they called, very unjustly, the abandonment of his country. 
M. de Gasparin never better loved France, where numerous 
synods and frequent visits to his family led him every year ; 
he never more faithfully served his country than during 
what people were pleased to call his exile. 

Numerous efforts to detach him from Switzerland, the 
more pressing in proportion as his reputation as an orator 
and a writer increased, miscarried before a resolve which 
neither Geneva nor Yaud had cause to regret. If we give 
the motives of this resolution of Count de Gasparin, it is 
because they reveal one of the phases of his character. As 
for him, he never felt the need of justifying an act whose 
legitimacy he had never doubted. 

There is something to us Protestants of more importance 
than Pope or director. M. de Gasparin, who admitted the 
authority of neither, was obliged more than once to defend 
himself against undoubted intrusions into his own self-gov- 
ernment. An enemy of slavery from his birth, he claimed 
to be free ; as free to choose his kind of life as his kind of 
labor. He did not recognize anybody's right to the mastery 
of his conscience. He censured severely the mission which 
certain people arrogate to themselves, of imposing such and 
such a duty upon their bretheren. These usurpations 
which the gospel reproves, which violate the conscience, 
which are an injury to individual dignity. Count de Gas- 
parin reproved energetically. He condemned them in his 
book, La Libert^ Morale: "False duties! Our lives will 



42 AGENOB BE QASPABIN, 

be very much encumbered if we do not take care concerning 
them. Our lives are at once encumbered and enslaved, 
we no longer breathe, we are no longer good for anything, 
and as everything cannot be borne, we will not be slow to 
neglect real obligations in order to cling to the factitious. 
These last have no end. You must do this ! You must 
do that ! Behold what they expect of you ; if you fail in 
this you will astonish, you will cause disgrace. And false 
duties lead to false self-accusings, and crushed under the 
weight of directions, of anathemas, you will advance with a 
tottering step. It is no longer the elastic pace of volunteers 
for the truth; it is the heavy step of the unfortunate who 
march under the whip. Happy are you if the disheartening 
servitude of false duties does not end by disgusting you 
with duty itself." 

When there came to Yalleyres some one of the bulletins 
fulminating the order or the blame, he replied with courtesy 
coupled with firmness. But he suffered, and people around 
him suffered. 

If the man, the Christian, is under compulsion to 
work, he is the master for choosing the mode, the field 
of his labor, the place of his dwelling ; it is his inalienable 
right. At the last day God will weigh the work of each. 

His right being established, let us approach the motives 
of the Count de Gasparin. He, himself, gives expression to 
them in the book which we have cited above. Speaking of 
Paris: "They talk enormously, they write enormously. 
They discuss, they criticise, they condense. The current 



PUBLIC CAUEEB. 43 

of ideas is rapid, more rapid perhaps than profound. Let 
us know if it is always easy to prevent ourselves from being 
carried away by it. To this torrent of literary modes, of 
opinions ready-made, one should oppose the granite of an 
original conviction; the despotism of reigning coteries 
should dash itself against individuals. Now the individ- 
uals, the originals, if you please, are not made in the full 
blast of the social furnace. Give to them a little solitude, 
a little tete-a-tete with themselves, with nature, and with 
God. 

" These tete-a-tetes — I have had experience in them — are 
impossible at Paris. It is very difficult to be one's self there. 
A man believes himself independent because he resists a 
party, and he does not perceive that he obeys the opposite 
party. In politics, in religion, in philosophy, the opposi- 
tions are regimentally enrolled like the rest — How much I 
have blessed God when circumstances have led me to live 
the life of the fields, far from coteries and near to truths 
and simple duties ! — These are things which I could not think 
nor write if I was not established in the grand air, under my 
arcade, before my little rustic table . . . The breeze 
which has passed over the fires, or over the prairie freshly 
mown, is healthful to breathe. It does some good, it for- 
tifies." ^ We might cite further. 

The Count Ag^nor de Gasparin had felt the iron teeth of 
the terrible threshing-machine. The expansion of all the 

1 "Liberte Morale/' book II : tlie Great Cities, 303 to 309. 



44 AGENOB DE QASPABIN. 

faculties, tlic joyfulness of the heart, are the two conditions 
in default of which a real man is seldom met with, and 
they render it more difficult still to mar his individuality, 
when possessed. Carried away by the Parisien whirlwind, 
the fine individuality of Count de Gasparin would never 
have blossomed into the richness of its independence ; nev- 
er would the author have written those books which will 
endure ; because he would not have thought or lived them. 
The grand country life in free Switzerland was necessary 
to him. He needed the full air, the mountain breezes com- 
ing in large waves, heavens nearer, bluer, more boundless. 
He needed the environment of tenderness, the joys of the 
domestic hearth-stone, the union of the two. This is what 
inspired the book " La Famille.'^ It is what has made the 
family a reality. 

After his marriage the Count Ag^nor de Gasparin passed 
nine years in France in public life. Compare the work of 
those nine years with the work of nine years of his subse- 
quent life, taken wherever you wish. From 1848 to 1857, 
he sustained almost alone the enormous weight of ecclesias- 
tical questions in the publication entitled: Archives of 
Christianity. He successively wrote the books : The Bible 
Defended, Innocent III, The Schools of Doubt, The Words 
of Truth, Happiness, Moral Liberty, Question of Neufchatel, 
The Tables Turning, After the Peace. With the date of 
185T : Equality, The Family, The Prospects of the Present 
Time, A Great People who Rise, America before Europe. 
We do not count the conferences to which are due : Luther, 



PUBLIC CAREER. 45 

The Good Old Times, The Conscience, The Enemy of the 
Family. Finally: The Declaration of War, Alsace Neutral, 
Call to Patriotism and to Good Sense, France, — the supreme 
expression of the patriotism of the author. And there re- 
main several volumes to be published, and Count Ag^nor 
de Gasparin had three or four books in plan. Is the sheaf 
sufficiently full ? Has not the workman labored enough ? 

To the potent reasons which kept him in Switzerland, to 
the reasons which he himself has taken pains to give, it is 
essential to add one which the great public has not known. 
God, in permitting a family catastrophe, assigned to the 
Count and Countess de Gasparin their places in Switzer- 
land, where, ever after, imperious duties caused them to 
reside. 



THE ORATOR AND THE WRITER 



THE ORATOR AND THE WRITER. 



Politics, history, morality, and the gospel, have each in 
turn occupied the attention of Count de Gasparin. 

In these differe^it domains he devoted himself without 
reserve to noble causes ; as justice, truth, liberty, suppres- 
sion of slavery, protection of the weak, defense of the 
oppressed, reclamation of the lost. All these subjects had 
their claims upon him ; all found him standing, sword in 
hand, upon the breach, whether that breach were called 
the tribune, the hall of conference, the book, or the journal. 
Always ready for combat in every arena, he was a man of 
battle. And, an astonishing thing to relate, he was to the 
same degree a man of peace. By looking at the matter 
more closely, however, we discover the key to the problem ; 
good warfare only conduces to true peace. 

A man of battle, Gasparin passed his life in struggling 
against wliat is false, against what is iniquitous, and in 
swimming against the returning waves. Can the life of a 
Christian, who is occupied with the great interests of 
humanity, be anything but a battle ? Battle against doubt, 
against sin ; battle in the chamber, in the synods of Switzer- 

(49) 



50 AGENOR DE GASPAlilK 

land and of France ; battle against black slavery, wliito 
slavery, socialism, Rome, electoral corruption, rationalism, 
mysticism, Darbyism, mormonism ; battle for the Bible, 
the family, personal independence, the oppressed. 

Here behold what was the life of Count Agdnor de Gas- 
parin. '^ The clarion of Jesus," said he, " never sounds 
the retreat." He always advanced, he never fell back. 
No, his life could not be anything but a rude combat in the 
age of the torpedoes, the iron platings, the Krupp guns, 
symbols of that violence of passions which have in turn 
invaded tlie old and the new world. It could not be other- 
wise in this age of material progress, in the age in which 
the discoveries of science, multiplying points of contact 
among the people, opening to human avidity prospects 
hitherto unknown, have had for the immediate result to 
over-excite a thirst for pleasure, to set into ebulition the 
appetites of the flesh, to make light of everything which 
opposes the lower instincts. 

An analysis of the works of Count de Gasparin would 
exceed the limits of this treatise.^ Here we will con- 
tent ourselves with pointing out the traits which character- 
ized him as a writer. 

The Count Agdnor de Gasparin was a man of principles. 
Now principle is the Truth, our letter of origin, the chain 
which binds us to heaven. Everywhere and always Gas- 
parin went back to principles. Whatever the subject he 

* The list of his works, with the date of their publication, will be 
found at the end of the volume. 



THE OllATOn AND THE WRITER. ^^ 

might have to treat he always studied it in the light of the 
immutable truth, and he ahyays deduced from it the conse- 
quences with an inflexible rigor. 

It was only the radical which satisfied him. Remove 
radical minds and the integrity of principles disappear. 
Gasparin found this radical principle the absolute in the 
eternal laws which the Creator has engraven at the bottom 
of our conscience, that interior prophet; he found it in 
the Bible, whose full inspiration his upright soul and his 
investigating mind had recognized. When the feet are 
placed upon such a base the head is not turned with every 
wind of doctrine. The speech remains firm and the look 
rests fixed upon the end. Nothing is rarer in Our age than 
such a point of departure. We wish well to certain prin- 
ciples, but upon condition of only taking from them what 
appears consonant with certain current ideas which we are 
afraid of wounding. Nobody to-day dares venture out 
upon deep water upon this faith of a principle, as the mar- 
mer does upon his faith in a compass or a star. People 
coast timidly along the shores of facts. It was not thus 
that the Christopher Columbuses were created. 

The grand lines of the portrait drawn pass beyond the 
details. The positive, rigorous affirmation, — which, in 
fact, is nothing but an expression of the absolute truth, — 
is the thing for which his adversaries, and often his friends, 
reproached Gasparin. But thence came with him that 
light which, leaving neither hesitation nor doubt, illumin- 
ated from the first steps the end toward which he was con- 



52 AGENOR BE GASFAEI^^. 

ducting us ; tlience, with reference to questions which tlie 
future alone could solve, came that perspicacity, that intui- 
tion which made of the author in two or three works a 
prophet and a precursor. 

These qualities, in the eyes of very many people, have 
their reverse side. The inflexibility of his principles often 
hindered Gasparin from complying with the exigencies of 
the moment, from accepting a transient condition of things, 
from contriving a way, or from softening the colors. If 
his eloquence possessed the art of infinite delicacy, his 
conscience had not the secret of accommodations. The 
truth, with him, overturned the prejudices which obstructed 
the route instead of dispersing them. Diplomacy, whether 
used by the false or by the true, was not his forte. As for 
errors, he did not turn around them, he broke them in 
pieces. To keep silence before them, to grant them a con- 
cession, how unfaithful it was in his eyes ! His rigid 
adherence to the absolute inspired him with hatred for all 
that was wrong, as subtleties, pious deviations, bad argu- 
ments in the service of good causes. " We belong to the 
truth," cried he. " The truth is not something which belongs 
to us." 

His arms were loyal, his breast faced the adversary. 
Never did he have recourse, on account of the need of his 
cause, to means so often in vogue with debaters ; to the 
complaisance of a journal, to some article drawn up by a 
friend, to the small intrigues which prepare the way for 
great successes. His integrity repelled every argument of 



THE OBATOR AND THE WEITEE. 53 

doubtful alloy ; the elevation of his character interdicted 
every personal attack. 

In theory everybody agrees to recognize the distinction 
between a man and his opinions ; that while we combat 
his opinions we must try to lead the man. In practice the 
contrary is done. But Gasparin did not conform to this 
practice. As he showed himself, radical, exclusive, inex- 
orable in presence of error, so much the more did he respect 
the rights of the individual. "Absolutism is not tolerant 
because it knows itself to be right." During or after the 
struggle, he was always ready, like a good chevalier, to 
extend both hands to the antagonist that he had been 
chiding. 

Gasparin did not have personal enemies. His courtesy 
routed prejudice, his cordiality extinguished hatreds. But 
opponents were not wanting. In the advance, for every 
political and religious liberty, for every reform, for every 
conquest of justice, ordinarily he was alone, proceeding 
beyond the advance guard lines. Alone in France for a 
long time against slavery, against electoral corruption ; 
almost alone for religious liberty, for the separation of 
church and state, on special questions in defense of Tahiti, 
and concerning the American conflict. In the first pages 
of his book entitled the " Declaration of War," he puts 
forward this fact of isolation with pride, but in it there is 
mingled a deep sadness. " In order to take in hand," said 
lie, " causes which compromise, in order to join issue with 
the oracles of the day, in order to keep aloof from the 



54 AGENOR DE GASPARIK 

little current slaveries, one must have taken liis resolution 
in advance of many griefs and many injustices. A free 
man, lie is the enemy ! At his appearance, our sheep- 
market is alarmed, our partnerships, being menaced, prepare 
themselves for battle. It is a rough trade which the re- 
dresser of wrongs and the apostle of truth undertakes ; the 
world advances only at the expense of him who pushes it." 

In advocating the truth, we hasten to say it, M. de Gas- 
parin did not present the subject dryly, like a problem in 
mathematics. 

Scarcely have we opened his books, when we feel that 
he has not written merely for the sake of writing, nor to 
satisfy a shabby literary vanity, nor for the sake of discus- 
sion. We find a heart which is groaning on account of 
wrongs and human sufferings, a heart which speaks with 
the accents of affection, which the desire of seeing human- 
ity in full completeness attain to light and to peace, em- 
braces. 

Love is the great leverage, as egotism is the great impo- 
tency. M. de Gasparin was sympathetic; he was so in 
the highest degree ; in confirmation, I appeal to all those 
who have met him, to all who have heard him, and to all 
who have read him. 

Take one of his books and open at any page whatever ; 
be it discussion, theories, history, philosophy, or science ; 
the light, brilliant indeed, strikes you less than the emo- 
tion ; you feel the beatings of the heart.^ 

' This is perhaps what caused Professor Horuung to say that Count 
de Gasparin was more of an orator than writer. 



lUE ORATOR AND THE WRITER. 55 

Full of respect for the people whom he addressed, and 
tliinking that it is improper to ask their time for lightness, 
the Count de Gasparin did not prepare for a conference, 
did not write a book, without being provided with all the 
documents bearing upon his work, without having made 
special and new studies, witliout having surrounded him- 
self with the resources wdiich his conscience required, old 
books, modern books, reviews, and journals. 

He read much ; he read with passion ; he read with a 
profound seriousness ; he read almost to the loss of his 
sight in consequence. 

Great thinkers have almost always been great readers. 
With his pencil in hand M. de Gasparin marked, in haste, 
everything as he read, either some idea of the author, or 
more frequently his own thought, which was thrown out 
from the contact, like the spark from the blow of the flint 
and steel. His subject did not leave him ; in walking, in 
conversation, quickly he would pencil a word or two upon the 
paper cards with which his vest pocket was abundantly 
provided ; the notes were classified afterward. 

Those months of readings and of meditations were the 
approaches to the siege. The Count de Gasparin humored 
himself at this time, he retarded himself with amusements 
till the moment when, seized with the ardor of the assault, 
he cast his plan upon paper, modifying it until it satisfied 
his logic and until it embraced all his ideas. Then the 
orator gave his conference ; later, aided by the connecting of 
his thoughts, he condensed and delivered it to publication. 



5Q A0E2T0B BE GASPABIK 

Prophet and precursor ! we have said. A prophet M. do 
Gasparin was more than once. 

In 1860 there burst out the frightful American conflict. 
The preservation or the abolition of slavery ; such was the 
question. To-day it has no place among us, but ten years 
ago Europe was still discussing it. 

Thanks to considerations of material and political inter- 
est, thanks to the old selfishness, which believes that every- 
thing goes well, provided it be not meddled with, the south 
met, especially in England, more sympathy than the north. 

In view of these hesitations, Gasparin could not contain 
himself ; the blood boiled in his veins. That slavery is a 
crime, is the principle with which he set out. And he cast 
upon Europe, he cast upon America, his indignant mani- 
festo, entitled Un Grand Peuple qui se releve [A Great 
People that is Rising]. The book, palpitating with noble 
indignation, condensed and strong, in which ardent love 
for the defenders of liberty was united to generosity 
for the adversaries, predicted a final triumph for the north. 
He predicted it without hesitation. He predicted it because 
he saw it ; injustice cannot have the closing word. He 
predicted it at the hour even when the south was just ob- 
taining some signal successes; when the weak declared 
that all was lost for the North ; that the North had only 
to submit to the will of the conqueror ; to the brutality of 
the ''fait accompli '^ Gasparin opposed the supremacy of 
principle ; to the North, then crushed, he gave the victory. 

This book was in Europe a relief for delicate consciences, 



THE ORATOR AND THE WRITER. 57 

like a refreshing breeze in the midst of a stifling and cor- 
rupted atmosphere. The North welcomed it with enthusi- 
asm. From the accents of that voice which reached the 
northern people from across the Atlantic, they felt their 
hope reawakening, their courage rising ; they felt that they 
had friends in Europe, whatever might be the apparent 
coldness of the masses and the positive hostility of certain 
parties. Citizens, captains, statesmen, the whole North, ex- 
pressed its gratitude to the author, who, after that time, 
carried on an earnest and grave correspondence with 
Lincoln. 

Gasparin owed this power of divination to his faith in 
justice. "The abolition of slavery," said he,' "will be, 
I have always thought, the principal conquest of the nine- 
teenth century ; it will be its recommendation to posterity 
and its compensation for many weaknesses." The book 
closes with these words : '^ " It is a matter decided, that 
the nineteenth century shall see the end of slavery in all its 
forms, and unhappy the man who opposes the march of 
such a progress." 

The fratricidal war being suppressed, the predictions of 
Gasparin being realized, he had certainly the right to give 
the United States such counsel as his conscience dictated, 
such as his sympathy excited in him, so he prepared his 
book, L'Amerique devant VEu7^02)e\_ America before Europe], 
to be carried to the friends beyond the sea. 

* Un Grand Peuple, page 8. 

* Ibid, page 404 



58 AGMOR be GASPARm. 

To tlie conquerors and to the conquered he speaks of jus- 
tice, of healthful equality, of pardoning and forgetting ; the 
book is a work of reconstruction, of moralization, replen- 
ished throughout with political science.' 

M. de Gasparin appears as a precursor in church ques- 
tions. He made of the subject, the separation of church and 
state, a searching study ; he regarded it under the triple 
light of the gospel, philosophy, and history. 

Placing himself on the height of principle, not admitting 
that any circumstances whatever could make the truth 
bend, he raised the curtain of absolute distinction from two 
domains. Remarkable phenomenon ! one which, moreover, 
is produced frequently in great evolutions of the human 
mind, two initiators appeared at the same time upon the 

^ A quick, penetrating glance explained in part this intuition of future 
events which characterized M. de Gasparin. In 1870, he was present 
at one of the sittings of the Council. The fathers, gathered in one of the 
side chapels of St. Peter, motionless upon the immense estrade, presented, 
in the daylight colored by the window-panes, the yellow light of the 
tapers, and the vapors of incense, an aspect of incomparable majesty. 
One would have said it was some picture of the centuries past, painted 
by Michael Angelo or Raphael. Soon all descended; in two files they 
moved in long procession : cardinals, bishops, patriarchs from beyond the 
sec, great monks of Egypt and Palestine, venerable figures, white beards, 
priestly attire of unequalled splendor, all gathered together in their sancti- 
ty, set themselves in motion. They were going to adore the holy sacra- 
ment exposed upon an altar. The ladies who accompanied M. de Gas- 
parin looked on, dazzled by the artistic beauty of the scene. M. de 
Gasparin, a little aside, was looking also. When the two phalanxes had 
disappeared in the depths of the nave, he drew near, shrugged slightly 
his shoulders, and said: " They will all vote for the Infallibility." 



THE ORATOR AND THE WRITER. 59 

ground of the ecclesiastical question — as two countries 
decided tlie same day the question of slavery, America pro- 
claiming liberty to the blacks, and Russia decreeing eman- 
cipation to the serfs — M. de Gasparin met upon that sum- 
mit where the vigor of his logic had conducted liim, a man 
of the highest intelligence and deepest piety, Professor 
Vinet. He hailed in him a brother and a companion in 
arms. 

Vinet had climbed the slope only with a certain slowness 
to some degree, in spite of himself.^ A crowned de- 
fender, in 1826, of the rights of conscience and of religious 
liberty, he did not reach in the onset the separation of 
church and state ; he held to the national institution by all 
the fibers of his heart. We will say, that, when his soul 
was brought face to face with the capital consequences of 
the principle that he had been establishing, it felt itself 
bound by the strong chains of filial regard. The free 
churches of Switzerland and France have not overlooked 
Vinet, but they have left in too deep shade the man who 
contended with the same power for the same truths. 

The Count Agenor de Gasparin, whose action always 
kept pace with his ideas, did not hesitate a moment to de- 
duce the consequences of the truth which had appeared to 
him. He resolutely planted his tent in the camp of separa- 
tion, and in the month of March, 1847, took help to the 
Constituent Assembly of the Free Church of the Canton of 

^ See his biography by Rawbert, page 363, second edition. 



60 AO^NOB BE GASPABIK 

Yaud. Yinet, ill, did not go there. He sent his cordial 
endorsement, accompanied by precious counsel. 

During the nine years which followed the death of the 
illustrious Yaudian^ M. de Gasparin defended alone, 
where it was little needed, in the archives of Christianity, 
the principles which the two had laid down. 

Intolerance, wherever it appeared, was odious to him: 
wherever he encountered it in Protestant countries it exasper- 
ated him. Combatting it from the first to the last hour of 
his life, he attacked it in Switzerland, in Prussia, in Eng- 
land, more vehemently even than at Rome or at Madrid. 
In France the battle did not cease for an instant ; so much 
the more severe because Gasparin had not only to constant- 
ly claim the rights of liberty in the presence of a govern- 
ment hostile to them, but to defend them against timid 
Protestants, whom his demands terrified, against Protes- 
tants poorly informed, who compromised the cause by 
persisting in demanding an authorization when it was 
only necessary to anticipate the authority by a warning. 

There is nothing superior in eloquence to the peroration 
to his last discourse in the Chamber, the 6th day of April, 
1846. After having cast before the Ministers both the 
processes entered upon, against the evangelists, and the 
condemnations inflicted upon the colporters, also the peti- 
tions of the churches of France, he cried out, accompanying 
his speech by a decided gesture : " Think of it. I say it to 
you seriously and with calmness, because I express here a 

» Vinet died in 1847. 



TRE ORATOn AND THE WRITER. ^\ 

resolution well established : if the liberty which we demand 
is refused us ; if new hindrances are opposed to the exercise 
of a necessary right, ah, well ! we will take upon our backs 
the pack of the colporter : we will proceed to sell Bibles, to 
confront your processes, and cause ourselves to be cast into 
prison!" There were some moments of silence, then a 
thunder of applause burst out. 

In the Count Ag 'nor de Gasparin the writer's energy was 
duplicated by the man of action. 

When in 1852 the married pair, MadiaY, were entered 
as prisoners in the jails of Tuscany by the Grand-Ducal 
government — their crime was having read the Bible with 
some friends — the Count Agdnor de Gasparin, being un- 
animously chosen, made part of the Christian embassy 
which was to proceed to Florence and demand the re- 
lease of these valiant witnesses for Jesus Christ. 
The affair presented serious difficulties. The problem 
might be solved either by the diplomatic method, 
or by the authority of principle. The last mode was the one, 
it is easy to conceive, which Gasparin wished to follow. 
Diplomatic intervention, should it succeed in opening to the 
Madiai* the doors of their prison, would, nevertheless, com- 
pi^omise the rights of religious liberty. In principle the 
cause would be lost. 

The deputation was to arrive on a certain day at Flor- 
ence, and there agree immediately upon the course to 
pursue. Some of the deputies, delaying en route, failed at 
the rendezvous. Lord Hoden, president of the deputation, 



G2 AOKNOR DE GASPARIN. 

the Count dc Gasparin, M. de Mimont, M. de Bonin, liaving 
come together at the date appointed, opened tlie negotia- 
tions without losing a moment. It was important to act 
quickly, in order to forestall every diplomatic intrigue and 
to shun all official protection. By liis energy, by the skil- 
ful direction which he knew how to give to the debates. 
Count de Gasparin kept the question upon its true basis. 
Not a representative of the Protestant powers mixed 
himself with the matter ; and in the reign of ideas, where 
true battles are lost and gained, religious liberty counted 
one victory the more.^ 

In 1842 M. de Gasparin had published his book entitled 
" General Interests of French Protestantism." Measuring? 
the extent of the field which he undertook to cultivate, and 
knowing the hardness of the subsoil permeated with old 
roots, he founded a society, which (being specially charged 
with sustaining the rights of Protestantism, and with imi- 
tating certain works ^) established in principle and de- 
fended and practiced in fact religious liberty. He had a 
few followers ; the majority showed themselves hostile to 
his plans, while the minority remained more or less in- 
different. All are striving to do to-day what he then strove 
to accomplish. The march of tlie age, the follies of Porno, 
the denials of rationalism, hastened the coming and meet- 
ing of those storms for which he wished to prepare his 
country. 

1 Some months later the Madiai' were pardoned. 

^The agricnltural colony of St. Fay, for young prisoners, is one of 
these works. 



TEE ORATOR AND THE WRITER. 63 

The public conferences wliicli tlie Count Ag^nor de Gas- 
parin gave at Geneva — in the hall De la Rive-droite, the hall 
De la Reformation, Casino, — exacted from him great exer- 
tions and brought to him great joys. His name, very soon 
becoming popular, drew togetlier a crowd of people, so that 
the place of meeting, capable of holding three thousand 
persons, could scarcely contain them. The workingmcn — • 
it was the audience which he coveted the most — betook 
themselves there as soon as they had finished their day's 
work. They were seen hastening along the streets and 
saying to one another: "Art thou going to Gasparin?" 
They massed themselves generally under the galleries. 
The fine figure, the loyal expression, the easy smile, the 
radiant front of the orator, his powerful voice, the fire 
which animated him, Ids gestures, graceful and noble — too 
many perhaps, but according well to the sentiments which 
came into his soul — an accent pathetic, some brief anecdote 
after abstract reasoning, some examples drawn from daily 
life, some sallies to lighten the way, a turn of wit peculiar 
to him, some citations which were accompanied by a charm- 
ing word that he addressed to some modest citizen of the 
city, a cry of indignation, a word of irony or of nice hoii- 
homie, bursts of tenderness which moved the heart to its 
inmost depths, a modesty that was felt to be true, a dignity 
which never abandoned him, all this held in suspense upon 
his utterance during one hour and often two, that public 
which was already wearied by a long day of labor. 

Gasparin spoke without notes, not by an effort of his 



64 AQENOB BE OASPARIN. 

memory, but because bis ideas, wbich the threaded bond of 
his logic strung together, succeeded each other naturally, 
creating their form in proportion as they took their place 
in the discourse. His plan once formed he held himself to 
it; his object once worked he proceeded toward it. He 
grasped everything in the talons of his mind. He gathered 
the flowers by the way. The anecdotes were often sug- 
gested by the sight of one of his auditors. 

What was difficult for himself, he prepared subject, plan, 
and developments with an intensity of abstraction, with a 
severity of criticism, a tenacity of analysis which left no 
point obscure or doubtful. Ideas leaped forth then so full 
of life, so abundant, with a bound so free that it could be 
said some blossoming or some harvest had come all alone, 
without the work of the plow or the sweat of the face.' 

The audience expressed its emotion by salvos of applause. 

Earnest convictions control us, we do not control them. 
One evening, without fear of compromising his popularity 
— ^fear like that will never disturb the soul of the orator — 
Gasparin, obedient to his most cherished convictions, an- 
nounced and gave, at the Circus de Pleinpalais, a conference 
upon the separation of church and state. He was rarely 
more sincere and valiant. It was the chevalier without fear, 
who attacked in front, but remained courteous in the battle. 
The audience, from three to four thousand people, adhered 

^The conferences of Pere Hyacintli, the first series of the confer- 
ences of Professor Naville, have only recalled at Geneva the attraction 
which the seances of Count de Gasparin afforded. 



THE ORATOR AND THE WRITER. 65 

in great majority to the national institution. Renewed 
applause more than once interrupted the discourse. It 
was the act which his adversaries applauded. They praised 
the man, his freedom, his courage. The next day in the 
work-shops : " Well ! Did you hear Gasparin ? " and the 
subject was discussed. 

He made abundant returns to the people of Geneva for 
their affection. He enjoyed his popularity. He enjoyed 
it so much the more because he did not owe it to those 
allusions to the petty interests of local politics, by Avhich 
men are always sure, when they follow the main current, 
to awaken some noisy approbation. On the contrary, Gas- 
parin did not favor those politicians, whoever they might be, 
who are accustomed to make their speech the slave of their 
ambition. He had too much personal dignity ; the truth 
inspired in him too much respect to foster the weaknesses 
of those even whom he loved the best. It was only to his 
intimate friends that he told how much he enjoyed the 
sympathy, and how highly he esteemed the intelligence 
of his public at Geneva. 

Undoubtedly it will be asked, what has been the result 
of these conferences and of these books ? God only can 
know that. He who sows the seed does not always see the 
harvest ripen. Who can tell the pathway which the word 
makes in the soul ? Borne upon the wings of the wind 
some seeds have sufficed to cover a country with splendid 
forests. Certainly, we could not expect that there would 
be developed, during several winters, noble theses upon 



QQ AGENOR BE GASrARIN. 

moral liberty, upon conscience, upon tlic family, upon the 
rights of the truth, of individuality, of the Gospel, without 
carrying into hearts some quickening impressions. 

Apparently the word has only the duration of an instant 
jtfter escaping the lips. "The moment in which I am 
speaking is already far from me." But it may have the 
power of the powder in the mine, to break the soil and 
cause the granite to leap into the air. When the authority 
of a life which is in perfect accord witii the principles 
announced supports that word, it carries with it an incalcu- 
lable force. 

J. — J. Rousseau, after having snatched away his five chil- 
dren from Madamoiselle Thdr^se Levasseur, in order to 
take them to the asylum, publishes his Emile^ that grave 
theory of his upon education and upon the duties of parents. 
He had avoided more sophism and more error, if he had 
practiced what he preached. The conscience protests 
against such dualism, and if it is to confer the name of 
benefactor of mankind upon a man, it will exact from him 
an absolute harmony between his life and his mind. The 
life of an orator, which accords with his principles, is in 
itself alone, eloquent preaching. In that Gasparin has 
been beneficent and strong. All classes of his hearers 
have been subjected to this double influence. How many 
skeptics have declared that they have been led to the Gos- 
pel by the work and by the example of this true Christian ! 
How many students, actually pastors, had their convictions 
strengthened, their benevolence re-warmed! How many 



THE ORATOR AND THE WRITER. 67 

conversions, serious and complete, liave liis books produced, 
at this very time, in France, in Switzerland, in England, 
in Germany, in Russia, in America, everywhere ! 

One of our great preachers cried out, " I shall never be 
able to give enough recognition to Gasparin for the good 
which his conferences have done ! " He said what many 
others have felt. 

Some of his meetings were given in the name of the 
" Young People's Christian Union," under the presidency 
of M. Max. Perrot. More than once this society came to 
express its gratitude to the orator, making the visit to Rivage 
upon a mild evening in March or April. Grouped upon 
the terrace, the Christian young people sang, as in the 
time of Luther, their most beautiful patriotic pieces and 
their most moving songs. The spring fragrance perfumed 
the air, the stars shone from the depths of the sky, the 
lake reflected their fires, and the voices ascended into the 
religious silence of the night. 



THE MAN 



THE MAN. 



We cannot thoroughly know a man without placing our. 
Belves at the central point whence his movement proceeds, 
whence radiate the light and the heat. For Count Agenor 
de Gasparin, the Bible was that central point. All the roots 
of his moral being were plunged into this generous soil. 
The Bible gave full sway to his faculties ; it opened to him 
vast horizons ; it raised him even to those glorious summits 
which he must abandon only to mount higher, in order to 
slake his thirst at the eternal source of truth. 

The Bible, from his early years, was to him as familiar as 
it is to every Protestant. But it did not take life for him 
till after his marriage. The first gift that he received from 
his betrothed was the book of the Gospels. The first prom- 
ise that she received from him was that they should read 
the Holy Word together every day. 

His faith outstripped hers. The nature of his soul did 
not permit him to be satisfied with traditional opinions. 
He wished to go to the bottom, to sift even to the bases, to 
search to the last stone in order to arrive at convictions. 
" So long as we are not convinced," he has somewhere said, 
'"to doubt is a duty. What is it that makes the Christian 



72 . AGENOR BE OASPARm. 

firm, humble, and devout? A faith without a perhaps." 
The half proofs, the weak proofs, he held in horror. Ac- 
cording to his belief they make more Atheists than the 
worst attacks of the unbelievino:. 

The indifference of the age, the scientific and literary 
method of Paris, had put to sleep his hereditary beliefs. 
Other questions, the political especially, had preoccupied his 
mind. But as soon as the importance of eternal interests 
was revealed to him he made them his first study, bringing 
to bear that seriousness, that integrity, that ardor of perse- 
verance in the pursuit of truth, wdiich formed the very es- 
sence of his character. 

He did not recoil before the minutise of exegesis, nor 
before the researches of sacred criticism. He faced stur- 
dily every objection. He did not leave one difficulty which 
he did not resolve. In proportion as one arose after 
another he encountered it, he took it in close conflict, and 
did not content himself with an easy triumph. And when 
the difficulty disappeared it was indeed evident that he had 
been right. 

In this struggle of incomparable gravity the entire man 
was engaged; soul, heart, intelligence, were fighting. 
Count de Gasparin never understood how a man could be 
divided in himself, and could believe as a Christian what 
he denied as a philosopher. 

Finally the day appeared. The Bible proved to him the 
Bible. What it said, what it accomplished — without speak- 
ing of the irrefragable evidences by which it was surrounded 



THE MAN. 73 

— to liim demonstrated its divinity. The splendor of tlio 
plan of God radiated for him. The Bible was for him very 
really the Word of God. He fully believed the Bible, the 
Bible inspired, the Bible infallible in all its parts, the Bible 
as the sole and absolute authority. 

He took possession of the truth, the truth took possession 
of him. It was the child-like obedience to the demands of 
the Gospel which gave to Count de Gasparin his solidity of 
character, his independence of coteries, the moral grandeur 
of his existence, the tenderness and amiable virtues which 
gave happiness to his own household. The Bible expanded 
his heart ; he had the energy, it gave to him the love ; he 
had the austere culture of goodness, it gave to him humane 
emotions ; he had the rectitude, it gave to him delicacy : 
the lines of the face have rei^ained manly, a light from on 
high has added to it the brightness and the sweetness. 

Hence his filial relations with God. Before everything, 
in little things as in great, the Christian consulted his 
Heavenly Father. He did not form the plan of an exten- 
sive journey, or of a short excursion without asking sincere- 
ly of Him, with whom nothing is small, to close the door if 
He disapproved that desire, to open its double folds if He 
permitted it to be realized. 

To pray, with M. de Gasparin was to breathe. Prayer 
was his life. Not the ceremonial prayer, in surplice and 
stole, but the prayer which is spontaneous, familiar, burst- 
ing forth at each incident, before a bush of eglantines, at 
the glories of the sunset, at the serenities of the dawn, on 



74 AGENOR BE GASPABm, 

tlie arrival of some news, at the shock of a grief, and amid 
the cheeriness of gaiety. Prayer brightened and enlivened 
his woi'k. Prayer put heaven into liis happiness. But 
prayer was for him that imperious w^ant which the child 
feels, of speaking to the father whose hand he holds and 
presses. 

Believing in the practical, burning with desire to com- 
municate to those who do not have it the truth of whicli he 
possessed the force and the joy. Count de Gasparin, every- 
where he went, scattered the Scriptures. He never left a 
modest inn or a large hotel without presenting — with grace- 
ful generosity— a new Testament to the servants who had 
waited upon him, and interesting pamphlets to subaltern 
agents. Never has he separated from a vetturino, from a 
cicerone, from a guide, or from 'I. bath-keeper without placing 
the Word of God in his hands. Always were these gifts 
received with respect. 

During his first sojourn at Kreuznach, in 1839, Count 
de Gasparin created a temporary colportage for distributing 
copies of the New Testament and the Psalms. When in 
1849 Italian troubles brought together twenty-five thou- 
sand troops at the same point, he established in his own 
drawing-room a vast depository for the distribution of the 
Scriptures. From morning till evening soldiers, officers 
often, arrived and received with emotion the Holy Word 
which was cordially offered to them, accompanied with some 
earnest and fraternal words. 

How many Garibaldians in Italy rejoining separately 



THE MAm 75 

or in bodies their great captain, clasped upon breasts 
which were going to meet the enemy's bullets, the Word of 
God which this other defender of liberty extended to them. 

The day, in traveling, whatever might have been the 
fatigue of it, was ended by a family service. Whenever 
the sojourn at any hotel was prolonged, the masters and ser- 
vants were invited to it. Those Sabbaths at Pegli — River of 
Genoa — at Baden — Argovie — at Kreuznach — in the Rhine 
provinces, will be long remembered, those Sabbaths which 
brought together around the Bible both tourists and friends. 

In Spain, as soon as he arrived in a city, the Count de 
Gasparin carefully sought for the Protestant evangelist and 
the young congregation ; he encouraged the latter while he 
strengthened the former. To declare the Gospel message 
to simple country auditors afforded him special happiness. 
He was seen, now and then, with face radiant, respiring 
with full lungs the mountain breezes, to pass over some 
Sundays in the long morning, the distance which separated 
Yalleyres from Baulmes, in order to supply the place in 
the latter village of the sick or absent pastor, then to rede- 
scend in the height of the day to Yalleyres, where he was to 
attend the little group at the Independent Church. His 
expositions were made familiar, accessible to all ; as soon 
as his wings were spread he began to ascend, ascending 
always, lifting up his auditors with him. 

" This man of the Bible," people cried out ; " this man 
of prayer, why he is but a monk ! His house is but a 
cloister. He must have carried into social life, into his 



76 AGMOE job GASPABm. ^ 

work, into his character, and even into his domestic sphere, 
a likeness of sad and solemn austerity ! " 

Do you think so ? Let us draw near ; let us study the 
man in the bosom of his interior life ; in his habitudes ; at 
Yalleyres above all, for it is there that he appears to us in 
full light, the very person, such as he was. 

The Count de Gasparin was a hard worker ; a worker 
with the intellect, but he was a complete man. The family 
was necessary to him ; healthful fatigues of the body were 
necessary to him; extensive horizons were necessary to 
him. 

After the worship of the two in the early morning, fol- 
lowed in summer by a walk through the fields and the 
woods, — the two always, three or four, when the children 
were taken with them. The breakfast at nine or half-past 
nine was dispatched with a good appetite ; then M. de Gas- 
parin installed himself beneath the ample arcade with 
arms and baggage; pen, inkstand, books, and paper.* 
He loved to write in the open air. As to his works, he 
had thought them over while traversing, with rapid steps, 
sometimes the yoke-elm hedge lane or the meadow of 
the Rivage, in view of the lake and of Mont Blanc; 

* M. de Gasparin, who was quick in motion, occasionally overturned 
bis inkstand, and soiled himself from it. One day at Sorrento, as a like 
adventure had changed into a veritable black sea the carpet, quite new, 
Francis, running to answer the call of his master, arms himself with 
two lemons, presses out the juice, scrubs, washes all so well that in the 
twinkling of an eye the carpet has recovered its original freshness. 
What a discovery ! M. de Gasparin is radiant. Henceforth he could, 
in all good conscience, upset his inkstand. 



THE MAir. _ .77 

sometimes the garden of Yalleyres full of flowers, with 
the Alps to the east, with the black Suchet, whose 
pure summit cuts itself off under the ether of the sun- 
setting ; with the diamond thread of the water-jet, which 
gives its warbling sound ; with the bees which are buzzing ; 
amid the noises from the fields ; amid the breezes from the 
hills; amid the perfumes from the meadows; amid the 
smiles of the blossoming, the singing of the birds, of the 
children, and the harvesters. 

He had a manner of working quite his own. He 
scrawled, as we have said, each note upon a square piece 
of paper ; his table was covered with them. Sometimes a 
capricious breeze carried off and sowed to the wind these 
sibylline leaves — the writing of M. de Gasparin resembled 
Egyptian hieroglyphics. To run after the precious sheets, 
to catch them and rearrange them in order was an opera- 
tion to be witnessed. 

The countryman, witnessing that chase, might have 
thought that some bank-bills engaged him. But no, there 
would have been no deception then ; he was well known ; 
a workman ardent in his work. And for him those roguish 
tricks of the wind were blessings ; to bound, to turn back 
the head, to clear a hedge or a wall, was what he loved. 

His notes — ^lie had them upon all subjects — were buried 
in innumerable bags, from which they came forth later to 
be classified and grouped, according to the demand of his 
plans, maturely conceived, conscientiously elaborated, 
without which he did not give a conference nor begin an 
editorial production. 



78 AGENOB BE GASPARIK 

The work lasted till dinner.^ After dinner they chatted, 
they lounged under the large trees of the yard, to the 
music of the fountains; they went out to visit, or they 
received their friends ; they surrendered themselves to 
some enjoyment ; M. de Gasparin brought to it the enter- 
tainment of a scholar, with that liveliness in good admix- 
ture which good work gives. I see still his smile — a smile 
modest and triumphant — when in a party at bowls, he struck 
in place, and his ball, causing his adversary's to fly into 
the distance, remained immovable at the right point. The 
ball, the pistol, the sword, the race, the leapings, all these 
amused him. To interest one's self is one of the secrets 
of happiness. 

The family table, abundant without luxury, was largely 
for hospitality. One felt himself at ease there. Between 
M. Ed. Boissier,^ M. de Gasparin, his wife, the children, 
and the guests, conversation never flagged. Not a conver- 
sation pretentious or extended — do not think it — ^but a 
familiar intercourse, which was relieved by frank pleasant- 
ries, or some pun hazarded by M. de Gasparin, who risked 
it for the honor of bonnes hetises.^ 

Gasparin's dainties were the large roasted chestnuts. 



^ Except in pressing cases, on Sunday M. de Gasparin went to see 
the sick and the afflicted of the village, who had been constantly visited 
during the week by different members of his family. 

2 A botanist of European reputation— brother-in-law of Count de Gas- 
parin — as cordial, as simple in manners as he was wise. 

^La Famille, 



THE MAN. 79 

raw apples, potatoes cooked beneath tlie ashes, olives, and 
above all, bread. 

As soon as the lamps were lighted, they passed into the 
drawing-room. M. de Gasparin, as long as his sight per- 
mitted him to do so, charmed the evenings by reading 
aloud. He was an admirable reader. He had every im- 
petuosity of passion, every delicacy of heart, and all the 
poesy of ideal. Those who heard him read a drama, a 
tragedy, a comedy, or recite the verses of Hugo or of Mus- 
set, will never forget that accent. 

The conversation of Count de Gasparin was oftener play- 
ful than serious, with some sallies of wit and the charm. 
Whenever at the Rivage, in a meeting of distinguished 
men, the interchange threatened to become too serious, M. 
de Gasparin, with a light of roguishness in his eyes, threw 
out some very absurd proposition or some very gay saying 
of great good sense, which put pedantry to flight, and 
cleared the wrinkles from every forehead. Excessive as- 
surance he detested. He named it egotism. He desired 
that a man constrain himself so as not to put others under 
constraint.^ 

Toward nine o'clock was conducted the service in which 
the servants and some true friends participated. M. de 

^He loved elegance under him, around him; his taste, very real 
and very pronounced, did not pay its regard either to the vestments or 
to the head-gear which displeased him; without minuteness, without 
personal exactions, he attached importance to the good management of 
the house; an irregularity in the domestic service chilled him. 



80 AOENOB DE GASPARIK 

* 

Gasparin explained the Bible, making the prayer himself 
whenever a stranger was visiting at the manor (in private 
it was Madame de Gasparin who did it). M. de Gasparin 
considered this the essential duty of the head of the family. 
He never gave up its accomplishment to anybody, his brother- 
in-law excepted, not even to a pastor who chanced to be 
present. 

There was nothing so edifying and simple as that service. 
In his prayer M. de Gasparin presented to God the parents, 
the friends, the inhabitants of the village. He mentioned 
with thanksgiving happy events, the beauty of the harvests, 
a deliverance, a joy. He spoke with a resignation full of 
supplication and hope, of accidents escaped during the day ; 
of this disturbance, or of that public or private misfortune. 

Permit me to put here a detail that would be indiscreet 
and childish, if it did not initiate us into the inner and 
living character of this domestic culture, while at the same 
time it reveals from the bottom the heart of Count de 
Gasparin. 

A guest, who participated in one of these evening ser- 
vices, was astonished, almost scandalized we own, at hear- 
ing M. de Gasparin pray for the cat that was sick, — an 
animal Avhich is the most caressing, the most attached to 
its master of any that we see. The guest re-examined liis 
first impression ; he understood him. The impression was 
effaced. How* can the glory of God, which consists in liis 
goodness, be attained by the petition of the Christian in 
behalf of one of His creatures ? Is not the Eternal, tho 



THE MAN. 81 

v^od of tlic sparrows ? Why ask us to conficlc our emotions 
to tlic Father who has counted the hairs of our head, to 
tlie Merciful One, who to the shorn lamb tempers the 
breeze ? God wants us to say to him everything ; to ask 
of him everything. Before God nothing is little ; every- 
thing is great. And with what carefulness he listens to 
us. Men, even the best, have a sympathy quickly ex- 
hausted. God himself never wearies; He welcomes, for 
He comprehends. 

" Man, in order to be fierce at his will," said M. de Gas- 
parin, " suppresses the soul of the animal, but the Bible 
teaches altogether otherwise. Of all the acts of cowardice, 
the most cowardly is that which does violence to the 
animal." ^ 

Elsewhere he wrote, " Luther prays for the rain and for 
the sun, for the people and for the beasts, for the harvest 
of the field and the flowers of his garden. The secret of 
that praying — shall we explain it to you ? According to 
Luther's faith, God was the Father ! Also, Luther had with 
God the liberty of the child." ^ 

Count Agenor de Gasparin would turn aside so as not to 
crush an insect. He would stoop in order to remove a 
little animal from the frequented pathway. 

In 1865, when on his first journey through Spain, he 
was following, with " the Band of Jura," a rough path at 
the foot of Mont Serrat ; Madame de Gasparin was walk- 

^ PensSes de liberie, page 120. 
^Luther. 



82 AGENOR DE GASPARIK 

ing in advance. She overtook a clownish fellow Avho was 
beating his horse that was attached to a heavy cart. Re- 
monstrances, exhortations, resulted only in caushig the 
handle of the whip to fall more rapidly upon the backbone 
of the animal. Madame de Gasparin, turning back, called 
her husband. Two bounds put him near the fellow, who 
had set himself upon his victim. Without saying a word, 
Gasparin snatched the whip from the hands of the clown, 
broke it into three pieces, and threw it over the hedge into 
the neighboring field. The eyes of the rascal shot fire. 
Just then the brave courier comes up, saying to Gasparin : ' 
" It is very well, sir, but if you continue like that, you will 
catch a blow from the ' navaja ! ' " ^ 

Being fond of the chase, M. de Gasparin abandoned it 
without difficulty, upon the prayer of his wife. That sen- 
sibility which affected him in meeting a solicitous counte- 
nance or chagrin, was extended to everything which had 
breath. He did not forget the day in which, seeing at his 
feet the partridge which he had wounded, he had to do 
violence to himself in order to finish it. He gave no more 
shots except the blank, and he never regretted it. 

They gave themselves sometimes a day of rest at Yal- 
leyres. This rest was for twelve hours, sixteen hours, twenty- 
four hours, passed in crossing over mountains and valleys, 

1 M. David Raney, a public courier, very devoted to the family, who 
was with its various members eight times in the journeys through Spain, 
without counting other expeditions. 

2 JYavaja is a formidable knife. 



THE MAN. 83 

in collectino; flowers by armfuls, in breathing. They set 
out in troop, in " band," before the dawn, for the summit 
of the Suchet, of the Chasseron, of the peaks of Bauhnes, 
for Mount Tendre, or elsewhere. Having come to the firs, 
the joy, the happiness of old friendships, and youthful 
ones also, made everything radiant. The fir-apples — the 
'• pines," as they call them below — with which the ground 
was strewn, flew here and there. They attacked a»d they 
defended. Peace was signed at the cottage, before the 
buckets of cream and the fresh beaten butter. Or happily 
there were patriotic hymns, some student's song, of which 
the refrain, repeated in chorus, awakened the echoes of the 
mountain ; better still, som.e poet or some favorite prose 
writer, from which they read a fragment, deliciously reclin- 
ing under an immense fir-tree, with thirty leagues of the 
Alps deployed along the horizon. They lighted fires ; they 
roasted potatoes — royal dish! Some gentian plants and 
some " Martagon lys " they carefully rooted up so as to 
transport them into the garden of Yalleyres. They tore 
up some worm-eaten stumps to feed the fire with ; they 
exhilarated themselves with vivifying draughts of air and 
with liberty. The eldest of the company appeared the 
youngest. That serious Christian, that Christian laborer, 
that Christian with robust beliefs, the absolute, the exact- 
ing, had the joys of the child. 

Each year M. de Gasparin took what he called his vaca- 
tion. He needed to stretch his wings, to set out for the 
blue. After a long year of labor, he made, with "the 



84 AGENOR BE GASPARIN. 

band," generally in September, a journey of several weeks. 
" The band " consisted of a collection of intimate friends, 
of which he was the soul. We find him, in the volumes 
dedicated to the recital of these expeditions,' possessing 
this character, ardent, devoted, chivalric, expansive, with 
this radiant gaiety, with these simplicities, with this hon- 
homie, this mischievousness without mischief, this esprit 
full of charm and sparklings, this sap of life, this will to 
enjoy everything, even contradictions, the flowering of an 
existence well employed, of a soul at peace with itself, in 
communion with God, who has not spread His blessings 
upon the earth to hinder the use of them to His children. 

" The holy God has put flowers, perfumes, colors every- 
where, even at the bottom of the sea, where they are used 
for nothing." '-^ 

This facility for happiness, this gaiety spraying in jets of 
light, this free flight of a benevolent mind, this abandon of an 
expansive and tender soul, these were not found by Count 
xigenor de Gasparin in his cradle. Toiling and serious, he 
was in his youth a little dull to the calls of duty. Timid, 
not with that timidity which springs from the fear of others 
or from distrust of one's self, but which arises from heart- 
sensitiveness, he preserved a little reserve on approach. 
He was obliged to do violence to himself to visit the poor, 
the sick ; to read the Bible to them and pray with them. 
In these visits and these consolations rendered he found a 

^ Bands du Jura, 
* La Famille. 



THE MAN. 85 

great solidity for his faith, and one of the great joys of his 
heart. In his constitution anxious, self-contained, with some 
moments of depression, these dispositions were gradually 
effaced under the action of the Gospel and in the warm 
atmosphere of love. He had become confident, hopeful, in 
the face of and against everything. 

He hated mere levity. Frivolity, as he regarded the mat- 
ter, empties the brain, dries up the heart, kills the soul. 
But the good laughs, how he loved them ! Those graces of 
wit, those sparkles of the thought, those were the crystalline 
little drops which spouted from a living spring and leaped to 
the sunshine. He had the joy because he had the seriousness 
in serious things, the integrity of heart, and because he was 
happy. There is need of the sun that the plant may clothe 
itself in its colors, hold its perfumes. The gaiety of Count 
de Gasparin came to him from the affranchisement of the 
soul, from the rejection of false duties, from the independ- 
ent life, and from a proper arrangement in his work. At 
Paris he had never been gay ; but at Yalleyres, at the 
Rivage, at Orange his gaity overflowed. He had a laugh so 
frank, so contagious, so joyous that we laughed at nothing 
but to hear him — candid soul ; resplendent laughter ! 

Although he had no children, family life had for M. de 
Gasparin its full expansion of happiness, of griefs, and of 
duties. The same drawing-room brought together young 
and old, all united by the strong ties of respect and of tender- 
ness. 

At Yalleyres and at Rivage M. de Gasparin lived with his 



83 A QENOB DE GA SPABIN, 

father-in-law, from whom death alone separated him ; with 
his brother-in-law M. Ed. Boissier, true brother, whose 
modesty, we have spoken of it before, equalled his scientific 
attainment/ The two children of this brother, too soon 
separated from a well-beloved wife, were brought up under 
the quadruple solicitude of the grandfather, the father, the 
aunt, and the uncle. 

As for the family in France, distance was of little ac- 
count ; they spanned it. Every year M. and Mme. de Gas- 
parin went to visit their father at Orange. They had more 
than once the privilege of seeing at Valleyres M. Paul 
de Gasparin, his wife, their children, whom they dearly 
loved, and M. Auguste de Gasparin, the uncle of predilec- 
tion. Every year, also, the Count Adrian de Gasparin 
came to be refreshed in the presence of his son, in the re- 
storing air of Yalleyres. His twilight was illumined with 
the sweet flames of filial tenderness. 

Afterward, came the great bereavements, the deep mourn- 
ings. Then they were bound together more closely. 

There was one time in which study encroached upon the 
family ; it was at the epoch, where in France the grave ec- 
clesiastic battles were fought. Excess of labor greatly im- 
paired the health of M. de Gasparin. The family suffered; 
he comprehended it, and it was then that he resolutely cut 
himself off fully from work ; he gave a large part of his 

^Honored with the most flattering distinctions which reached him 
from Europe, America, and the East, not a public journal ever knew a 
word of it. 



THE MAN. 87 

time to tlie fireside, to lectures of general interest, and to 
exercises of the body. His day's task once finished, he put 
the key under the gate — that is the privilege of the strong 
— and never again departed from that healthful discipline 
which is a safeguard to the rights of the heart. If he has 
been able, with so much charm, with a truthfulness so sat- 
isfying, to depict the delights and the obligations of the 
family, it is because he has relished the delights by begin- 
ning to fulfill the duties. 

Valleyres was not the "Coppet" of the time of Madam 
de Stael, though wit and science had there their well 
furnished representatives. It was a democratic republic — at 
most a White House, as at Washington, where friends came 
to exchange their ideas, to devise freely, to make music, to 
listen to some literary chef-d'oeuvre which M. de Gasparin 
interpreted. No importance was given, — rare fact here be- 
low, — to other sentiment than a sweet resting in the midst 
of life's burdensome journey, in some Eden suddenly re- 
found. 

There was seen there the botanist Renter, learned and 
modest friend of M. Ed. Boissier, almost a member of the 
family, enjoying in silence everything that was said, on rare 
occasions putting in a fitting and last word. There, too, w^re 
to be met MM. and Mmes. Recordon de Ranees, MM. and 
Mmes. Dufour Montch^rand, their niece Helene, intimate 
visitors ; the Vuitel family, connected from father to son, and 
from mother to daughter with the people of the manor ; the 



88 AGENOB DE GASPAUm. 

Baron Alfred de Gumoens' and his young wife; the Baron 
and Baronness de Bonstetten,"^ whom the Autumn brought 
each year to their estates; the old and good friends 
from Orhe, Yverdon, Mathod, Lausanne, and from many 
houses in the surrounding country. As to pastors, M. 
Berger, attached for a long time to the Boissier family ; he 
had solemnized at Yalleyres the marriage of M. and Mme. 
de Gasparin ; M. Tachet, sensitive heart, afterward a martyr 
to his fidelity to the ecclesiastical convictions which he had 
adopted ; M. Eeymond, the skillful director of the school for 
nurses at Lausanne: M. Chatelanat, whose modesty was 
equal to his extensive knowledge ; M. Borel, a friend in the 
pleasant and the unpleasant days, a national pastor, found- 
er and director of the Refuge (home) of Genoa; each 
brought his individuality, and all, hearts faithful and Chris- 
tian. 

Outside of Yalleyres M. de Gasparin found in his visits to 
Morges, the society of his relatives Forel, M. and Mme. Lom- 
bard, and Yinet. A profound respect, a perfect unity of 
views in church matters, attached him to the latter. The 
conversations, rather with Madam than with Count de 
Gasparin, were endless. 

' Charming spirit, cliivalric cliaracter, tliis Baron de GumoOns, a major 
in tlie Austrian army. He had fulfilled with distinction a difficult 
mission in Persia. Chief of one of the most distinguished families of the 
Canton of Vaud, he had retired from service, and was living upon his 
land of Gumoeus, where he gave large hospitality. Death removed him 
from the tender care of his people in 1878. 

2 Name historic and literary. 



THE MAN. 89 

At Geneva M. de Gasparin lived on a footing of great 
intimacy with the savant Argust de La Rive, a relative 
upon the side of his wife. 

When these two friends met after an absence, they said, as 
if they had just left each other the evening before, "Let 
us see! let us arrange Europe a little." Would to 
God that they might have arranged it! With M. 
Alfred Le Fort, another relative, there was a rolling fire of 
witticism ; both knew Moliere by heart ; one citation re- 
sponded to another ; a repertory was at command. The 
relations with M. Eugene de La Rive, with Adrien Naville, 
wdth Colonel Saladin, Colonel Tronchin, M. Barbey, the 
pastors Gaussen, Coulin, and Descomboz, with Merle d'Au- 
bignd, were of an order differing according to the character 
and the age of these men, eminent beyond their titles.^ 

M. de Gasparin had the most respectful affection for 
M. and Mme. de Butini de La Rive, the uncle and aunt of 
his wife. He continued to speak of their goodness, of the 
spirit of M. Butini, always young and always brilliant. 

The family at Orange and at Nimes held a large place 
in his heart. He sustained a constant correspondence with 
his brother, M. Paul de Gasparin. He venerated his uncles 

^ Let us be permitted to name here M.M. Alfred Du Mont, Alplionse 
de Candolle, Alphonse Favre, de Morsier, Sarassin, Marchinville, Pictet 
de la Rive, Max Perrot, W. and L. de la Rive, Micheli, Prevost, Boissier, 
Cramer, Le Maitre, without counting a host of distinguished savanls, of 
professors emeriti, whom we cannot enumerate, whose sympathy and 
goodness were precious to M. de Gasparin. 



90 AGENOR BE GA8PABIN. 

and liis aunts of Daunant, Dumas de Gasparin, and every 
one of his relatives who remained firmly attached to him. 
He loved with a paternal affection his nephews and his 
neices ; they were habitual objects of his fervent prayers. 
What he asked for them above all was faith, a life conse- 
crated to the service of God ; the question of happiness 
was only after these. 

An ardent soul casts its rays upon everything that it 
approaches, particularly upon all that demands interest or 
protection. Count Agdnor de Gasparin showed love for 
the children ; he loved them for their weakness and for 
their candor. 

At Seville, 1867, he assisted, during the passover festivi- 
ties, in a celebrated performance ; the " Sant Intierro," 
a crystal coffin, which is carried along the streets 
once in twenty years.' The place, converted into an 
amphitheatre, overflowed with the faithful. Near to him 
was found a family, the grandmother, the mother, and an 
enormous little girl of eight or ten years. Short, thick-set, 
broader than high, she could not see anything. She had 
to be perched upon her chair ; the ladies who were stand- 
ing upon theirs had to be entreated to sit down. The poor 
fat child did not remain the less buried behind a mountain of 
swollen petticoats. The Count de Gasparin raised her up, 
seated her upon his arm, and kept her there enthroned 
during all the hour that the procession lasted. The child 



' This coffin is consecrated to the Saviour. 



THE MAN. 91 

enjoyed it heartily, finding the position excellent ; " and 
grandmother also ! " cried she, pointing to the other arm. 
Happily the grandmother, bursting with laughter at the 
idea, repelled her with energy : " Caramba ! " . The per- 
formance being ended M. de Gasparin deposited his burden ; 
rubbing his arm a little he said, laughing, " She has 
weight ! " 

Whenever, near the end of autumn, M. de Gasparin was 
passing along across the prairie, the little villagers, who 
would run toward him asking the hour, received always a 
friendly word and some pretty pamphlet, some captivating 
history with illustrations, intended to beguile the weariness 
of the solitude till the time came for bringing the cows 
and sheep into the stable. 

In the month of August the children of the Sunday- 
school had their festival. Upon a beautiful aftel-noon, 
ranged in column, flowers in the hat, chanting songs and wild 
couplets, they went forward toward the border of the wood, 
following the paths which led from the villages of Val- 
leyres. Ranees, I'Abergement, Sergey, and Montch^rand. 
Having arrived under the great oaks they gave each other 
a hand and formed an immense circle. M. de Gasparin, 
not one being happier, stood in the midst and asked, " Chil- 
dren, do you wish me to give you a speech which will last 
two hours ?" And the children cry, " Yes, yes, two hours!" 
He now, in a few words, carried them to the feet of the 
Lord. Then came the car full of baskets ; the phalanx, 
well packed, passed under the venerable tree where white 



92 AGENOR BE GASPARIS. 

bread and cakes were heaped up. Afterwards came the 
plays that, with his brother-in-law, M. de Gasparin directed, 
participated in, and illuminated with his own joy ; in the 
evening the fire-works followed, and the return into the 
villages with lightness of heart. 

And the festival of Christmas, when the hoar-frost 
comes with its diamonds, the green, fragrant branches of 
the mountain pines, when the great hall full of children is 
resplendent under the fires of the pinery, transformed into 
a wax-candle chandelier ! 

And the festival of " Encouragements ^^"^ when in May, 
before the tables loaded with small parcels, each one bear- 
ing the name of a child, he, standing, having turned toward 
those faces which sparkled in the dawn of their spring-time 
happiness, spoke to them with love, of Jesus and of heaven. 

When the children of the village learned that they would 
see him no more, they were in consternation. Some of 
them, assembled under an old porch, were talking of it. 
A woman, from her garden, heard them say, " It is over, 
we shall not again have the festival in the wood I " She 
said, " You will again go there ; others will give the festival to 
you," and she named the young people who still remained 
at the manor. " It is not the same thing," said the chil- 
dren. " We took him by the legs ! " In a word, they had 
expressed the easy approach, the familiar goodness, that 
something, in fact, which belonged only to him.^ 

^ His humility, profound and true, had struck every one in the village. 
"When for the first time after the death of the Count de Gasparin, a 
member of the family clothed in mourning crossed the street, one of the 



THE MAN. 93 

M. dc Gasparin, in concert with his brotlier-in-hiw, had 
founded at Valleyres some societies of mutual lielp for tlie 
men and for the women, seeking to awaken the initiative 
spirit with tlie villagers. The kind of inferiority in whicli 
they maintained the Avomen at the canton of Vaud made 
him indignant. 

As to the country people, he was jealous for their rights, 
and was preoccupied with their material well-being. 
The village found itself contracted by the possessions of dif- 
ferent notables ; neither he nor his brother-in-law had ever 
accepted, Avith the object of enlarging the patrimonial 
domain, the offers of purchase that Avere frequently made 
them; they Avanted to leave to the cultivators of the land 
full poAver of enlargement. One single occasion, some 
weeks before his death, M. de Gasparin made himself the 
gainer of a bit of land planted Avith magnificent walnut 
trees, by which the road was shaded, and which formed for 
the village the most picturesque entrance.^ The walnut 
trees were about to disappear, a contractor Avas bidding for 
them ; at any price it was necessary to save them. M. and 
Mme. de Gasparin resolved to purchase this small tract 
with the firm intention of keeping only the decliA- 
ity Avith the great trees, and of dividing the remainder into 

inhabitants stopped her, and without other preamble cried out, pale v\^ith 
emotion, ' ' And then, humble. " In a poor chamber the working-woman, 
who was sewing so as to care for a sick grandmother, interrupted her- 
self all at once, and with needle suspended, said, "As for that man we 
may say of him : well-beloved. " 
^ By the side of the churcli. 



94 AGENOR DE GASrAFJN. 

lots, wRicli tlicy liad felicitated tlicmsclvcs upon giving 
\ afterward to those wlio, among the honest and industri- 
ous poor people, would have most need for building. 
At the moment of concluding the purchase the pro- 
prietor introduced into tlie instrument an express clause, 
in virtue of which all right of building was excluded. 
M. de Gasparin had much displeasure on account of it, 
and wanted to break the bargain; but some one near him 
pleaded the cause of the Avalnuts, the joy of the children, and 
the glory of the village ; the walnuts lived * * * they 
are living still. 

From fortnight to fortnight, on Sunday afternoons, the 
Count de Gasparin gave, at Valleyres, meetings, to which 
the people came from Orb and the surrounding villages. 
He prepared himself for them with the same conscientious- 
ness that he exercised in those of Geneva, which were 
given to three thousand auditors. He treated those sub- 
jects the best calculated to excite interest among the inhab- 
itants of the country, to enlarge and enrich their minds. 
After the explanation of some verses of Scripture and the 
prayer, he related his travels, he told the event of the day : 
the tunnelling of Mont Cenis, the railway laid from .one end 
to the other of America, the serial expeditions, the discover- 
ies of science; he retraced the most heroic episodes of 
national history. It was all done with that living, precise, 
serious and gay, picturesque manner of his, vrith those 
words which of a sudden caused a frank laugh to burst from 
the audience. 



THE 3IAK 9.5 

In Italy, in the East, in Germany, in Spain, in France, in 
Switzerland, everywhere where he had sojourned, the Count 
de Gasparin left devoted friends among the servants of 
the hotel, the vetturini, the children along shore, in the 
fishermen's huts or the peasants' cabins. On returning to 
his own home he sent to this one and that some effective 
souvenir. I knew at Cannes a keeper of a bath-house — lie 
died in 1877 — who to the last received these testimonials of 
unceasing affection. 

If M. de Gasparin knew how to give he knew how to re- 
fuse ; the thing is a difficult one to the generous. Alms at 
the door, epistolary demands, so much swollen with flatter- 
ies, so much stuffed with frightening texts, the seekings of 
laziness or disorder, collections in behalf of festivals that 
his conscience disapproved, or for interests contrary to his 
faith, he dismissed them without considering them. 

He had an intelligent and practical charity. M. and 
Mme. de Gasparin founded in 1859, at Lausanne, a free 
normal school for nurses, and placed it under the direction 
of the pastor and his wife, M. and Mme. Reymond. This 
establishment, being an application of the principle of free 
evangelical development, graduated each year from sixteen 
to eighteen female attendants or skilled women, seriously 
instructed, well qualified, sought for everywhere where a 
malady requires experienced care and consecration to duty. 

In 1864 there was opened at Yverdon a modest asylum, 
which, during the season of the baths, collected the indigent 
sick people to whom board, baths, and showers were 
gratuitously furnished. 



98 AGENOR DE 0A8PABIK 

Virtue, said oney is not always gracious, nor faith always 
amiable. These words could not apply to M. de Gasparin, 
nothing could equal his cordiality towards his domestics ; 
he cherished them ; he was deeply loved by them in return. 
Every evening, on their knees before God, master and 
servants felt themselves united by eternal bonds. Finally, 
it was matter of tradition, the two families always did show 
respect to those who served them. 

In the world, M. de Gasparin willingly suffered himself 
to be eclipsed : there appeared in him a discrete attractive- 
ness, a native grace, an indulgence, an urbanity which was 
seducing and charming; the intellect may blind, but it is 
the heart which captivates. Courteous without any affect- 
ation, modest and simple, skillful to manage a delicate 
irony without ever wounding; a look, his smile rather than 
his speech, indicated his thought at the hearing of some 
very absurd paradox, of some gross foolishness proclaimed 
in a cutting tone. His bonhomie, so much the more 
attractive as it was felt to be natural, had none of those 
haughty condescensions which one meets in the presence 
of the aristocrat stooping for an instant to the level of 
common mortals. In the intimate circle, he set his wits 
at work for the happiness of each one. No one was more 
a servant, in the sublime sense of the word. Willingly he- 
sacrificed everything; everything except his duty. 

In 1861 he passed with the "' Bande^'* to Monaco. The 
management announces for the evening a concert : a prima 
donna, dlite orchestra, brilliant programme 1 M. de Gasparia 



THE MAN. 97 

enchanted, transmits the good news to his band. One may 
judge of the anticipated pleasure. Then, M. de Gasparin 
sets himself to reflecting; it is the manager of the gambling 
tables who gives this entertainment. It is he who furnishes 
the tickets ; M. de Gasparin knits his brow. Some ask to 
pay for the tickets as they pay for apartments and repasts,, 
furnished under the same management ; it is refused them. 
M. de Gasparin in spite of more than one solicitation, 
refuses in his turn to go, resolved to own nothing whatever, 
not even the echo of a voice to the unclean haunt where so 
many souls were stained, and so much happiness engulfed. 
The harmonies of the orchestra gave forth their sound ; the 
Bande did not go to the concert. 

God created M. de Gasparin a man of peace, his times 
made him a man of war. But in the war he sought only 
for peace. He pursued peace even to the last. He pursued 
it in 1870-71, to the last month of his life, in the tumult 
of the m^lee, assailed with a multitude of letters with 
signatures and without, more murderous than bullets. The 
anonymous letters, those thrusts of the stilletto given from 
behind, he denominated by their true name; he called them 
" cowardice ". They never dethroned his courage ; wounded, 
he remained firm at the breach. He died a man of peace ; 
always fighting. His courtesy no more abandoned him 
than his valor. Exposed to the violent, behind the hateful 
antagonist he saw the man ; he respected him. It is uncer- 
tainty of convictions which causes intolerance. The 
Christian, solid in his faith, possesses an inexhaustible 



98 AGENOR BE GASPARIK 

fund of breadth, of earnest desire for light, of pity for the 
wandering; "Christian love," M. de Gasparin somewhere 
said, " teaches us to cherish those whom we combat, to pray 
for the persecutors. The evangelical rule reduces it to 
this: severity for things, charity for persons; to respect 
those who are deceived, but to spare no error." If our discus- 
sions should follow this rule, what a transformation there 
would be here below ! 

Gentle toward men, inflexible where he acted upon prin- 
ciple, M. de Gasparin on many an occasion sacrificed his 
right, never the right. When he yielded, it was not weak- 
ness ; he knew how, raising the brow, to assert his dignity. 

He had noble manifestations of passion, and generous 
rage. If an unusual gross malevolence seized upon what 
was most dear to him, his indignation, rising in powerful 
waves, swept everything before it. Injustice, an act low 
and cruel, caused him to bound full of passion. He so^vn, 
however, mastered himself. 

One Sunday, at Yalleyres, — it was an epoch of violence 
which had been set in motion against the free churchy- 
some clown, I don't know who, an arrant scoundrel, the 
terror of the village, threw himself, stick in hand, upon a 
young woman who was going to the independent chapel, 
and struck her. People were looking on ; no one moved. 
The Count de Gasparin, who was approaching, leaped upon 
the individual, lifted him up and threw him on a heap of 
manure — in pity for his bones, said he — whilst M. Ed. Boia- 
sier, coming from another direction, seized the scamp from 



THE MA^. 99 

below, and this time stretched him at his full length upon the 
pavement, much to the great astonishment of the people of 
the village, who were confounded at seeing that gentlemen had 
such rude fists, and knew how to use them. This pro\od a 
great good to the inhabitants of Yalleyres. They learned not 
to tremble in the presence of audacious weakness. It was 
a great good to the brutal savage, who was in this way 
treated according to his habits. He learned to respect, 
then to love, the two men who had chastised him. Upon 
his death-bed be appealed to them, desired their prayers, 
received their visits, and departed, to all appearance, recon- 
ciled to God. Such consolations extended to the dying 
were not isolated facts. Several skeptics, refusing to 
the end of their lives the exhortations of the official pastor, 
asked sympathetic aid from this layman, full of faith. One 
christian, on learning of the death of Count de Gasparin, 
cried out, in the midst of expressions of personal regret : 
*' I had counted upon him to assist me in my last hour." 
M. de Gasparin understood grief. He curbed himself 
under his sorrows. In the latter part of the autumn of 
1857 he returned from one of his short journeys. A letter 
called him suddenly to Orange. His cherished uncle, 
M. Auguste de Gasparin, was dying there, at the close 
of a long and cruel malady. M. and Mme. de Gas- 
parin set out instantly, and did not leave that chamber of 
suffering until after the last sigh. The two were united to 
the sufferer by the same convictions, by the same ho;.e, by 
ardent prayers, by the certainty of an eternal reunion. 



100 AGENOB BE GASPABIN. 

That uncle, with an individuality beyond measure, was tho 
poetic flame which was placed from his cradle upon the 
forehead of his nephew. The faith of the nephew, like a 
brilliant sun, lighted up the decline of his life. 

Some weeks later the same funeral scenes were renewed 
at the Rivage. M. Boissier, father-in-law of M. de Gas- 
parin, experienced a fatal attack. A man with a heart 
exceedingly tender, with an original and sprightly mind, 
with a steady judgment, with an exquisite goodness, 
remarkably simple in his habits, serviceable to the little 
ones, a great lover of horses, a skilful violinist, he was 
intimately connected with the Count Adrien de Gasparin, 
the father-in-law of his daughter. By twenty years of con- 
stant relationship and frequent living together, in the 
Hotel de Paris or under the roof of Valleyres, there was 
matured a perfect fellowship between the two ; as much in 
affinity of character as in resemblance of taste, this friend- 
ship had been cemented. In 1848, the children of M. Bois- 
sier were established near him. They were around his 
death-bed. The Count Agenor de Gasparin, in the distress 
of the final adieu, reproached himself with not having con- 
tributed sufficiently to his happiness. The old man, rising 
a little, said to him, in a voice which all at once became 
firm, "As for you, Agenor, you have been a son-in-law such 
as there never was," then added, looking upon his son, his 
daughter, and his son-in-law, " Three farewells " ; and their 
hands were pressed in a final grasp. 

Life is a pilgrimage. The arrivals are sweet \ bitter are 
the separations. 



THE MAN. 101 

111 1862, Count Agenor cle Gaspariii was about to leave 
Valleyres. He had liad the happiness of keeping his father 
there for several montlis. Scarcely had he arrived at 
Vienna when a telegram informed him that his father had 
fallen by an attack of apoplexy. A former attack, some 
years before, had put the life of the Count de Gasparin 
in danger. He had remained an invalid, but with faculties 
and heart intact. Monsieur and Madame de Gasparin has- 
tened to Orange. Death is only a temporary victory by the 
destroyer. As a believer he knew it, but as a son he wept. 

Two years afterward, in 1864, the inauguration of the 
statue of the celebrated agriculturist brought together at 
Orange a multitude of savants. His two sons met this dlite 
assembly at the temple. That day the Count de Gasparin 
occupied the chair. He spoke with all the force of his con- 
victions, with all the tenderness of his heart. It was the 
first time, perhaps, that several of his auditors had ever 
heard the Gospel. 

A man, who had enjoyed frequent relationship with 
Count Agdnor de Gasparin, asked one day of his brother-in- 
law, " But you did not recognize in him any defect ? " "I 
never discovered any in him," replied M. Edward Boissier ; 
" and yet for more than thirty years I have lived with 
them." Having reached the end of a long career, after 
having seen much of the inmost thoughts of men, after 
having sounded many souls, I affirm, in my turn, that I 
have known only one other christian — J. L. Micheli — and 
he^ is no longer living — who was so near to perfection. 



102 AGENOR BE GASPAIUN. 

These two men had in common only the social center to 
which they belonged, — very different in character, in ten- 
dencies, in faculties, in habits, in temperament. 

Diversity in unity — behold what the Gospel effects ! The 
world and the philosophers pretend to level everything. 
The Gospel gives full latitude to divergencies. There is 
no fear in consequence of them. Without the prism where 
would be the vivid brilliancy of the sun 1 



THE LAST WINTER 



THE LAST \VINTER. 



During the last two years of his life, the Count Agenor 
de Gasparin had to endure a trial which, while modifying 
his habits, threatened to shackle his labors. He had mag- 
nificent eyes, full of light and full of sweetness. His look 
Was piercing. Toward the end of August, 1862, he wrote 
and read during a great part of the day, giving readings in 
a loud voice the evening after by the full light of the lamp. 
His sight all at once became enfeebled. The progress of 
the malady was rapid. When his eyes began decidedly to 
refuse him service, there was a painful struggle. To see 
less was no longer to read, no longer to write, and to 
sacrifice great projects of study and of publication. After 
the constraints of an intense struggle, he said, "Ah well, I 
will change my mode of living. I will visit the poor 
more. I will write less, or I will no longer write at all." 
But that was not what God designed. Dr. Eecordon, of 
Lausanne, the skillful oculist and devoted friend, counseled 
Count de Gasparin to take, before being forced to it, the 
habit of dictating and of causing himself to be read to.^ 

* Even to the end, by the grace of God, Count Agenor de Gasparin 
had been able to read most of his family letters, his letters of business, 

(105) 



106 AGHNOn BE GASPABIN. 

He caused himself to be read to, and he dictated. Being 
an orator, habituated to cast his thought upon paper only 
when it was formulated in his mind, the effort cost him 
less than others. His individuality asserted itself the more, 
evolved itself the better, by being disengaged from studies 
which no longer burdened him. 

Near him the suffering was poignant; it seemed as if 
the sun had been obscured. To serve him as reader was 
exceedingly pleasant ; but that voice, so penetrating, which 
charmed and delighted when it interpreted the grand 
works of great authors, could no longer be heard. It was 
then that, in his sixtieth year, he learned by heart hundreds 
and hundreds of verses. In place of reading he recited. 
The sacrifice all the time remained painful. The weak- 
ness of his sight must increase. The Count de Gasparin, 
following the progress of the affliction, let, at times, a sigh 
escape him, then raising his forehead settles himself into 
resignation and into happiness. 

The terrible year of 1870 — the year of mourning^ as 
M. de Gasparin, from the opening of hostilities, called it — 

his notes upon paper cards, and his Bible. For his dictations he 
employed the pen of M. Ph. Besson, a young watchmaker, who had left 
his tools in order to serve him. M. Yanad, instructor at Yalleyres, 
devoted to him some portions of each day. He called at odd moments 
to the same functions M. G. Widmer, vine-dresser, a man of intelligence 
and of heart. The latter said, speaking of these several weeks which 
were passed near M. de Gasparin, * ' Should it have been necessary to 
prolong this operation, I would no longer have been able to leave him 1 " 
He preserved for each of them a sincere christian affection. 



IHE LAST WINTER. 107 

was at hand, bringing to France unheard of disasters, an 
uninterrupted course of defeats, the loss of two provinces 
and tlie massacre of her children. If ever senseless war 
cost a people dear, it was that. A vertigo blinded them, 
the drunkenness of pride pressed them to the abysses. 

At this time M. de Gasparin found himself at Gais, 
Appenzell. Outside politics possessed strange allurements ; 
pretensions made themselves frivolous ; diplomatic proceed- 
ings became dark and wicked. But a war ! No one could 
believe that it would come. No, there could not be men suffi- 
ciently impious, crowds sufficiently furious to unchain upon 
Europe this infernal tempest. 

When the certain, frightful news burst forth, M. de Gas- 
parin was struck, as with a poignard blow, full in the heart. 
A last hope was awakened in that soul, too energetic to 
admit of faintness. France was going to rise ! France 
must say, " I do not wish it ! " In France there were, 
moreover, men ; there were men of character ; the empire 
has not entirely flattened out ! Then, with a single and con- 
tinued effort, he wrote his " Declaration de Guerre.^'' (Decla- 
aration of war.) The Journal des Dehats refused to insert 
it, at first feebly. Others followed suit. Sometime before 
being conquered, entire France sank down. " To Berlin ! " 
was the cry of the nation, run mad. The prophetic writing 
obtained only rare and timid assents, and these were soon ef- 
faced. Before the accomplished fact, everybody curbed him- 
self. M. de Gasparin himself did not waver. He suffered 
cruelly. To burn for his country with a passionate love, to 



108 AGENOn DE QASPAMW. ' 

see it incapable of manly resistance, to remain stan(3!ng a!one 
when everything was gathering, to speak alone of national 
honor when the nation crouched at the foot of honor, to 
appeal alone to its conscience when the conscience has dia* 
appeared, and to proffer alone the word of peace when 
delirium is vociferous with cries of fury, — these imply a 
heroism which is purchased at the price of blood, and the 
ages are barren of these asts of valor. 

Now comes a series of d-jsolations. When the blood of 
France had in vain inundated the fields of battle, M. d© 
Gasparin published La RepuUique neutre c?' Alsace [The 
neutral Republic of Alsace], — December 1870. In Alsace 
a movement began; people same to consult him; he knew 
from a good source that the neutrality of Alsace, if Alsace 
desired it, had some chances^; but the clerical party did not 
want it; the clerical party fmm the outset wished for the 
war; and the war continued^ 

In February 1871, after thd Bourbaki disaster, when the 
invasion was advancing with giant steps, when the govern- 
ment on the defensive was recoiling from city to city, " when 
the last man and the last sou" had been expended, M. de 
Gasparin sent forth his last cry; '^ L* Appel au patriotisme 
et au hon sens^^ [The appeal to patriotism and to good sense.] 
No one listened, but the three writings will remain ; they 
will remain as the prophecies of a grand patriot ; and who- 
ever will read them will find" therein the predictions of the 
clairvoyant, predictions which each disaster, from that time 
on, was destined to fulfill. The taking of Paris afflicted 



THE LAST WINTER. 109 

Count de Gasparin less, indeed, than the moral abasement 
of France had already done. The csmmune, of which he 
saw the first acts, made him desperate. The siege, the 
taking of Paris, was France humiliated; the commune was 
France debased, crippled with attacks, menaced ; indomitable 
in his austere love of his country, even to the end, he spoke 
the truth ; to the very bottom, he drank the bitter chalice. 
During the unlucky months of the war, he prepared his 
book, the book which bears the name of that France so 
energetically loved; a book of courage, of hope, of faith. 
In it he exhorted his compatriots to the pursuit of the 
truth, to moral seriousness, to a respect for conscience, to 
the service of justice, to heights of real grandeur ; and, to 
say the wdiole in one word, to the Gospel. Broken down 
he was not, no, not for an hour; hope returned and with 
hope, labor. We have said it already, he was one of those 
hopeful beings, of whom God has made conquerors. 

Here is another note, which he wrote toward the end of 
the w^ar, with the great pencil which the weakness of his 
eyes constrained him to use ; found again after the publica- 
tion of La France; it was to end the last page of it: "I 
have done my duty ; later they wall see that I have spoken 
the truth ; will it be too late ? 

No, it was not too late ; France has seen, she has compre- 
hended, she has re-awakened. Oh ! how the heart of this 
Frenchman would have bounded at this magnificent rising ! 
His words, spread abroad in profusion, and the free accents 
of his voice have not been lost. Performing their grand 



110 AGENOB BE GASPARm, 

part, they have anticipated the re-awakening. The lips are 
icj, but the heart beats still ; the patriot continues to live 
and the laborer has not ceased to labor. 

In February a consolation was accorded him. M. and 
Madame de Gasparin passed the winter at Yalleyres. On 
the 30th of January, yielding to pressing solicitations, the 
Count de Gasparin had, in spite of his painful pre-occupation, 
given "a sitting" (a conference,) in the city of Orbe. It 
was a sitting for a recitation. He had not the heart to 
speak upon any subject, whatever it might be. The audience 
crowded the hall. Two days later, ambulance-mattresses 
covered its floor; soldiers weakened, frozen, sick, were 
stretched upon it ; people heard there the incoherent cries 
of delirium; the groaning forced out by the excess of 
suffering, the weeping of those who could not see again a 
mother; there was agony, there was dying. 

But that evening the funereal picture was veiled. 
During an hour and a half the Count de Gasparin, remain- 
ing standing, his grand and beautiful face in a sort of 
penumbra which ennobled it, recited prime selections from 
Hugo, from Molier^, ' from Lamartine, from Musset. He 
gained his auditory ; even the children were electrified. 

Nevertheless, the Bourbaki army,which the German troops 
were pursuing, was crowded back upon Switzerland ; ^ an 
inexplicable silence enveloped their movements. Ordinarily 
the Count de Gasparin went out in the afternoon ; he was 

» Tartuffe. 

• The Internes said naively: " They have made us run, go on! '* 



THE LAST WINTER. HI 

accustomed to go across the country ; the flocks of ravens 
to which he was accustomed to make a daily distribution 
awaited and escorted him. In the last days of January 
they disappeared. He said at the manor : " The table is 
set for them upon some field of battle on the other side of 
the Jura." Sinister noises resounded in the air ; people heard 
a far-off rumbling of detonations, as if the thunder had 
held its deafening roarings behind the mountain. A heavy 
snow covered the ground. 

Every day they went to seek for news. The first of Feb- 
ruary the news was carried to Yverdon. Two or three 
French cavaliers galloped along the road : It is the breaking 
of the ice ! The city of Yverdon was full of Bourbaki 
officers ; the army corps was just arriving. At the manor 
was the chief of staff of the regiment of '^MoMles,^^ whom 
a dispatch had announced. In haste lodgings and refresh- 
ments were prepared. 

Yery soon they saw along the slopes of the Swiss Jura, 
descending in a lamentable file, the exhausted soldiers, 
chilled, sick, with feet frozen. This avalanche filled up the 
village. Towards nine o'clock in the evening, behold the 
" Mobiles,^^ almost children, happy to find a good supper, 
good lodgings, and a good welcome. In a moment, the 
barns and sheds being full, M. and Mme. de Gasparin retired 
into their drawing-room, blessing God who had done them 
the favor of permitting them to shelter some waifs in the 
midst of the disaster. They took the names of the 
^' Mobiles r Mme. de Gasparin proceeded to write to their 



112 AOENOR DE GASPARIK 

families. The door is open : " Sir, another staff officer ! " 
It is the Count Tascher de la Pagerie, cousin of the Emperor, 
accompanied by eight or ten officers. Where put them ? 
What give them to eat? Nothing more! There were 
neither provisions nor beds. As to waking up the brave 
^'MoMIes,''^ who are sleeping as one sleeps at twenty years, 
it must not be done. 

Meanwhile they caused the Count Tascher de la Pagerie 
and his staff officer to enter the dining-hall, and set upon 
the table everything that they could find. They discovered 
a little room still unoccupied ; and besides there was in the 
village another habitation, which belonged to M. and 
Madame de Gasparin, of which they had not thought. Let 
us go thither ; everything will be arranged ! — The officers 
are passably fed, they know who shelters them. It was 
known at the manor that the party to whom they belonged 
had pushed France on to her destruction. But the Count 
de Gasparin was too much of a gentleman to let appear a 
shade of coolness in his welcome. The reception was cor- 
dial, and the next day M. de Gasparin gave a frank grasp 
of the hand to Count Tascher, who on. horseback was con- 
ducting his regiment to the depot of Yverdon. 

It was there that the advance guard of the corps 
was resting. The second and the third of the month, 
through all the ravines of the mountains, the. bulk of the 
army descended upon the country. Soldiers took a stag- 
gering pace, with a vague look, as if overcome with fatigue 
and pain. The Tascher staff officer was replaced by the 



THE LAST WINTEB. 113 

staff officer of a confederated Zurich corps. The Frencli 
infantry occupied the smallest corners ; in the same barn 
one could hear spoken German, French, Arabic ; those whom 
they could not house were given warm soup, bread, and 
cheese, and a glass of wine. The question of subsistence 
was a great one ; they no longer knew where to find bread 
stuff, meat, or vegetables. Twenty thousand soldiers could 
not fall at once upon a little country village without em- 
barrassing it. ^ There were no longer means of shelter- 
ing a single man, and men were continually arriving. 

Decidedly there was need of warning the Syndic ; he is 
turning the entire column upon the manor ! M. de Gas- 
parin ran to the house of the Syndic, resolved to arrest the 
wave. Some moments after, he returned : " Is it all right?" 
asked his wife. " Well ! I found this poor Syndic at his 
wits end, and I said to him : send to us everybody that you 
cannot lodge." ^ 

^ M. Francis Allen, a helper and friend of the family, displayed under 
these circumstances a rare talent as a purveyor. 

2 The inhabitants of Valleyres, farmers and villagers around aloout, 
welcomed with open arms the limping and chilled soldiers. The year 
had not been a good one ; so much was needed from it ; and there was 
no great choice of lodgings. Ah well, this little they gave; they put the 
best sauce into the puddings, the best potatoes upon the table ; they 
spared neither coffee nor milk, nor cheese, nor bread ; they doubled up 
the beds, more than one sleeping upon the floor, or upon the straw in the 
barn, in order to accommodate the lame between the cover and the down. 
The notables were entertained at their inns. At Montcherand some very 
modest collections of young ladies effected the distributions of army 
soup. Thus the canton of Yaud remained for these Internes a sort of 



114 AOENOB BE OASPABIK 

The next day at an early liour M. and Mme. de Gaspa- 
rin betook themselves to Orbe. 

Upon the road, covered with snow, they met at every 
step soldiers trembling with fever or with cold and hun- 
ger. "Do you see below there that great roof?" said 
they ; " go there, you will find what will refresh you." 
When he came in the suburbs of Orbe, to the bivouac fires 
surrounded with spectral figures, a prophetic presentiment 
passed through the mind of M. de Gasparin. " These poor 
people," cried he, " are drawing contagion after them ; 
the country will be filled with poison ! " 

Meanwhile, a wing of the manor was transformed into a 
hospital. People had been with a large ambulance fur- 
nished with mattresses, to seek for the maimed who were 
scattered along the road to France ; they had brought back 
a full load.^ 

Yery soon typhus fever and small-pox appeared. There 
were, then, coming during the sixth, ambulance wagons 
stained with blood ; they were in search of typhoid, small- 
pox, and scurvy patients, to the great regret of those to be 

paradise, at least a country of feasting; the greater part had only one 
idea ; to return here after the war. Alas ! poor friends, there, as else- 
where, it was necessary to work in order to eat. 

^ The enterprise was not an easy one. Corps of Infantry and Cavalry 
intercepted the route between Orbe and Montcherand; it was necessary 
then to regain it higher up, cross fields with the snow often up to the 
middle of the wheels. Two vigorous, steady horses drew the ambulance. 
Fernande, the skillful coachman of M. and Madame de Gasparin, putting 
all of his heart into the expedition, conducted the train. 



THE LAST WINTER. 115 

transported. As soon as the hospital attendants installed 
the latter in tlieir carriages, and as they put into tlieir 
hands a morsel of bread, with a slice of roast beef, tlie 
Count de Gasparin, passing from one carriage to anotlier, 
climbed upon them, pressed those pallid hands in his OAvn, 
and slipped into them an offering, timid about it as lie 
always was when he undertook to extend any gift whicli 
resembled alms. The manor retained those with frozen 
feet, those sick with dysentery, with bronchitis, and some 
convalescents. M. de Gasparin had seen the truth ; the 
contagious maladies soon became virulent ; they consumed 
the most precious lives. He himself hereby lost his own. 
Deleterious miasmas filled the air. To face them, in order 
to care for these poor people, was a privilege and a pleasure. 
But there was need of still another thing. 

Every day the Count de Gasparin held in their rooms a 
very simple service, which the soldiers willingly listened 
to. Many, alas, scarcely saw here further or higher than 
the name of their regiment, their orderly number, the vast 
soup tureen, and the piece of flesh with refreshing odors. 
Concerning these, M. de Gasparin said, " I must find a soul 
for them." He did not confine himself to the expositions 
of the Gospel, he chatted with them. There were upon 
the table envelopes and paper ; he aided them in their cor- 
respondence. Their foreheads lighted up ; those extended 
lips were seen to smile ; the brave soldiers felt themselves 
beloved, and they loved in their turn. Some wrote about 
it afterwards. They would always call to mind, they de- 
clared, what Count de Gasparin had said to them. 



116 AGENOR DE GASPARm. 

The moiitli of February was passed in caring for tlie 
Internes^ in the improvised hospital at Yalleyres, and in 
visiting the hospital of Orbe. In the latter place also the 
Count de Gasparin had the art of making himself listened 
to. That art sprang from the impulses of the heart. As 
soon as he appeared the patients would raise themselves 
upon the elbow ; those avIio ordinarily were sleeping with 
closed fists when some solemn exhortations were going on, 
roused themselves very quickly when the sound came from 
de Gasparin.^ 

The first of March all the '' InternSs'^ of Yalleyres de- 
parted cured, seated in the ambulances which had brought 
them there sick ; they betook themselves, each laden with 
cigars, with chocolate, and with a little viaticum, to the 
central bureau of Yverdon. The Doly Scriptures they had 
received on their arrival. It was necessary to disinfect the 
lodging places. The household remained there some weeks 
still. 

'In this field hospital, in the midst of the typhus cases, Madame 
Malh, Mile. M. Hos, Mile. E. Duf assuaged with their hands the most 
repulsive wounds; M. Gavin, delegated by the municipality, directed, 
with a punctuality which had liOthing rude or vigorous about it, the 
material part of the work; M. Welirli, the son, brought there all his 
devotion; M. Duperrex, pastor, brought a sympathetic and christian 
heart. The patients did not fail for visitors, whose conversation charmed 
away the long hours of suffering, and the same thing took place in dif- 
ferent cities which had collected the ''Internes:' At Neuchatel the 
ladies, Madame M. Abr, neice of M. and Mme. de Gasparin, among 
others, filled the same office of nurse. The contagion harvested largely 
among these helpers and servants of Jesus, 



THE LAST WINTER. II7 

Madame de Gasparin, haunted with mournful presenti- 
ments, had easily obtained from her husband an extension 
of their sojourn in these beloved places, in the bosom of the 
marvels of the new-born blossomins; which was chasino: 
away the somber winter. Together they took long walks 
to the foot of the mountain, a garden of the Lord, where 
the primrose thickets, yellow with gold, and blue hepaticas, 
formed the most enchanting carpet; upon the Suchet, 
touched here and there with flakes of snow, with crocuses 
in plenty everywhere where the snow had left the ground. 
They must have spoken eternal adieus. 

The 17th of March, some friends went to the manor to 
celebrate with the Count and the Countess de, Gasparin the 
thirty-fourth anniversary of their marriage. Never had M. 
de Gasparin been so happy. He felt himself young ; the 
years had not touched him : " When in reading," said he, 
" I saw the word ' old man ' joined to those two others, 
* sixty years,' I was astonished ! There was need on my 
part of an instant of reflection before crying out : " But 
sixty years ? it is I." 

The departure for Geneva was still delayed for eight 
days. M. de Gasparin, who seemed to have a renewal of life, 
considered this incident an indifferent circumstance ; his 
wife received it as one condemned to death receives the re- 
spite. M. de Gasparin laughed at her terrors. " A sojourn 
at Rivage, it is not at this that one should tremble ! " cried 
he, and he added : " in six weeks we shall be back again." 
But there are souls to which love, painful suffering, distrust 



118 AGFWOB BE GASPARIK 

of life, give a second siglit, as if the anticipated calamity 
projected upon them an immense shadow, which would en- 
shroud them long before the blow has struck. It seemed 
to Madame de Gasparin that to abandon Valleyres was to 
abandon forever her Eden ; in proportion as the instant of 
departure approached her heart was chilled. " I am going 
to a funeral," said she, and her friends smiled. The day 
in which they left Valleyres, M. de Gasparin felt again a 
new touch of the contagious disease, which the Internes 
had brought. The two travelers arrived in a violent, sharp 
and piercing northeast wind which, from Geneva, where 
the express had left them, to the Rivage, where an uncov- 
ered carriage took them, continued to freeze them and 
strike them in the face, with the anger of a powerful 
enemy. No one took any account of the alteration which 
the health of the Count de Gasparin was gradually under- 
going. He preserved to the last his vivacity, his effusions 
of tenderness, his gayety, his contentment ; never had his 
life shown a more royal expansion. 

God spared to his servant the inconsolable bitterness of 
separation. The last day, M. de Gasparin did not believe 
in the gravity of his sickness. He attended to reading with 
a lively interest ; he listened to music with delight. 

When a flood of tears suddenly interrupted her reading, 
he looked toward his wife, then gave her a smile beaming 
with hope. He now betook himself to the paths where the 
nightingales gave their concerts ; where the trees had their 
odor-bearing crowns; he breathed the perfumes. Some- 



THE LAST WINTER. 119 

times lie plunged his face into the midst of tufts embalmed 
with lilies, and said : " I love that." Passing his hand over 
his darkened eyes, he recalled with a joyous smile the 
pleasantry which his beloved sister-in-law, Madame Edmund 
Boissier, had often addressed him. She accused him, when 
a wearisome visit made itself interminable, of putting on a 
glacial (freezing) look. "Lucille," cried he to himself, 
" could well say to me in that hour, ' Agdnor, you make your 
eyes glassy ! ' " 

He always had joy in his heart. In his invalid condition 
he preserved it, and as if to encourage himself in it, he 
said, " Christians are not uniformly joyous ; they trail the 
wing. It is shameful ! " 

He said to his well-beloved, extending to her both of his 
hands : " Let us sit in heavenly places ; the heavenly places, 
are they not the eternal aspirations of those who are loved 
with an eternal love ? " 

When his sufferings became more active, snatching poetic 
words from one of the beautiful songs of Schulmann, he 
said : " Ich grolle nicht." (I do not murmur.) Surrounded 
by his most intimate friends, he continually reached those 
in France by affection and by prayer ; and, the crisis being 
passed, he smiled at the thought of seeing them again very 
soon in Switzerland or at their own houses. 

Towards evening, the thirteenth of May, with his well- 
beloved, he followed, for the last time, the hedge-alley. The 
birds were flitting about making their nests. He repeated 
these verses : ' ~ - - ~ 



120 AOENOR BE GASFABm. 

*'Be like the bird that on a spray. 

In fearless rapture sings ; 
Kor heeds the twigs frail trembling sway, 

Secure in well-tried wings. " 

And his well-beloved remembered these other verses, 
which, another evening, — an evening of happiness after a 
day of exceeding beauty, — he had penciled : 

From the glimmering of sunset 

The horizon is colored ; 

Let us greet, of the sun, 

The fast dying splendors. 

He is extinguished, 

But what does it matter, 

For a new birth cometh elsewhere. 

Is there not a bright dawn 

In each of our sunsets ? 

Poetry in the starry forehead, faith and ardent love 
accompanied him even to the last hour. With a firm step 
he regained the little drawing-room, the nest of his happy 
days, neglecting when he ascended the staix^way to place 
his hand upon the support, fearing by the sight of his in- 
creasing weakness to frighten his wife, who mute with grief 
was watching him. She wished to pass on behind him. 
" No," said he ; " you know that I love to have you before 
me." Then he advanced upon the balcony among the 
roses, looked upon the clear skies toward the east, and 
returned with a radiant face, but with a mortal pallor. 
The malady was hastening its march, and frightful frontal 
pains — they had been repeated several times since the 



THE LAST WINTEB. 121 

evening before — forced him to lie down. He addressed the 
last word, a word of ineffable tenderness, to his well-beloved, 
and quietly fell asleep. Hope was not extinguished. Pray- 
ers, cries of distress, all ascended impulsively towards 
heaven. A cry was given ; the rattle came, and hope sank 
away. In this chamber there were two sufferers. At half 
past two o'clock in the morning his last breath was exhaled. 
It was the 14th of May, 1871. If years were counted by 
the power of the affections, by the useful employment of 
the time granted, by the works realized, the Count Agenor 
de Gasparin lived more than sixty-one years. ^ 

He died on the field of battle at the post of honor, in 
the service of his master, in the accomplishment of the 
humblest and most beautiful task. He died as he had 
lived, in peace. Peace dwelt in his heart ; peace was his 
companion to the last moment, an apanage of the strong. 
Peace only blossoms in the truth. His pathway was never 
devious ; leading across the forum, the senate, the deserts 
of the East, the eager struggle of Europe, always more 
and more luminous, it ever more ruggedly aimed for the 
summits. As a Christian enamored with love and with 
ideal, human tenderness and the transports of faith as- 
cended with him, even to the threshold of that eternity 
where Jesus was waiting. The 16th of May his mortal 
remains were deposited in the family cemetery at Yalleyres, 
near the church where his marriage had been celebrated. 

* He was sixty years and eiglit months. 



122 AGENOB BE GASPABIK 

The inhabitants of the country followed in mourning. 
The voices of some humble ones of this world — he loved 
them well — caused to be heard, over the open grave, the 
accents of the heart, a moving expression from the regrets 
and the gratitude of all those who had known him. Upon 
the tombstone, by the side of those words, "I know in 
whom I have believed," they should have engraved these 
also, " I have fought the good fight." The secret of the 
moral grandeur of Count de Gasparin lies entirely in that. 

France, generous and fruitful land, thou hast lost one of 
thy noblest children. He never flattered thee, because he 
loved thee with a holy love ; the love of the son who wishes 
to see his mother respected and happy. Thy griefs were 
his. His fervent and persistent prayers continually pre- 
sented thee to Him who holds in his hands the destinies of 
nations. 

All this attraction centered in the life which we have 
just been tracing. Those first years, already manly, those 
strong studies, those breathings of liberty, that conquering 
faith, that struggle to the last amid the serenities of peace, 
that consecration to causes eternally true, will it be but a 
meteor forever extinguished on this side of the tomb ? 

No ; there will remain something for the generations to 
come. What has been given to one man to realize by his 
faith, every man in proportion to his powers with the same 
aid may accomplish. The gifts and the positions vary ad 
infinitum^ but the duty is one, and the law of solidarity, 
which envelopes all the members of the human family, 



THE LAST WINTEB. 123 

renders us all responsible to God. One may serve God in 
the cottage as in the palace, in the deep shadows of the 
mine as in the splendors of the sun. In the workshops of 
industry as in the cabinet of the learned, in the possession 
of the most desirable wealth, as upon the bed of suffering 
and under the tortures of the heart. 

youth of France ! I place here the battle cry of the 
Count Agenor de Gasparin. En avant et en haut. " For- 
ward and upward." 

THE END. 



NOTE. 

The arms of the Gasparans, graven upon the iron seal carried iuo 
France by the Corsican ancestors in the 16th century and religiously 
preserved in the family, are : 

Azure, with gold jleur de lis, accompanied by three golden stars with 
six rays, which are placed two and one. 

They had this characteristic device : 

FeRKO NGN ORO. 



THE WORKS 



OF 



COUI^T AGENOR DE GASPAEIK 



Db l'Amortissement, broch. Paris, 1834. 

La Erance doit-elle conserver Alger, brocli. Paris, 1834 ou 1835. 

EscLAVAGE ET Traite, 1 vol. in-8. Pai-is, 1838. 

Lettre 1 M. Athanase Coquerel, brocli. Paris, 1840. 

Lettre sur une question posee par l'ESPEKANCE, broch. Paris, 

1843. 
Interets generaux du Protestantisme eranqais, 1 vol. in-8. 

Paris, 1843. 
Christianisme ET Paganisme, 2 vol. in-8. Geneve, 1846. 
Eeponsb 1 LA BROCHURE DE M. Ad. Monod, brocb. Paris, 1849. 
La Bible defendue, etc., broch. Paris, 1854. 
Les Ecoles du doute ET l'Ecolb DE LA poi, 1 vol. in-8. Geneve, 

1854.— In-1 8, Paris, 1874 3 

La Bonne Guerre, cantiqne. Paris, 1855. 

Des Tables tourkantes, du Surnaturel et des Esprits, 2 vol. 

in-1 8. Paris, 1855 2 

Apr^s la Paix, broch. Paris, 1856 2 

La Question db Neuchatel, broch. Geneve, 1857. 

Un Mot de plus sur la Question de Neuchatel, Geneve, 1857. 

Dernieres Remarques sue* x,a Question de Neuchatel. Geneve, 

1857. 



WORKS OF COUNT AGENOR DE GASPABm. 

Innocent III, 1 vol. in-18, Paris (Geneve), 1859. — Ed. success., Paris, 

in-18 4 

Le BoNHEUR, 1 vol. in-18. Paris, 1862 7 

Les Perspectives du temps, 1 vol. in-18. Paris (Geneve), 1860. . . 
Un Grand Peuple qui se releve, P^ ed., 1 vol. in-8. Paris, 1866. — 

Ed. success., in-18 « 6 

L'Ameriqde devant l'Europe, 1 vol. in-8. Paris, 1862. — Ed. success., 

in 18 2 

Une Parole de paix sur le differend entre l'Angleterre et 

LES Etats-Unis, brocli. Paris, 1862. 

La Famille, 2 vol. in-18. Paris, 1865 11 

La Liberte morale, 2 vol. in-18. Paris, 1868 4 

L'EcALiTE, 1 vol. in-18. Paris, 1869 4 

Le Christianisme liberal et la Separation de l'Eglise et de 

l'Etat, brocli. Lausanne, 1869. (Reuni a L'Eglise selon l'Evan- 

gile.) 

La Declaration DE GUERRE, brocli. Paris, 1870 2 

La Republique NEUTRE d' Alsace, brocli. Geneve, 1870. ..... 2 

Appel au patriotisme et au bon sens, broch. Geneve, 1871. ... 2 

La Prance, 2 vol. in-18. Paris, 1872 4 

La Conscience, 1 vol. in 18. Paris, 1872 6 

Luther et la Reforme, 1 vol. in-18. Paris, 1873 5 

Lb Bon vieux Temps, 1 vol. in-18. Paris, 1873 3 

Les Reclamations des femmes, brocli. Paris, 1873. (Reuni a L'En- 

nemi de la Famille.) 3 

L'Ennemi DE LA Famille, 1 vol. in-18. Paris, 1874. , 5 

Pensees de liberte, 1 vol. in-18. Paris, 1876 3 

Paroles de verite, 1 vol. in-18. Paris, 1876 2 

Droits du cceur, 1 vol. in-18. Paris, 1878 3 

L'Eglise selon l'Evangile, 2 vol. in-18. (Sous presse.) 

La Bible. 

Questions diverses. 

DiscouRS et Brochures politiques. 



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